Activist Citizenship Education: A Framework for Creating Justice Citizens [1st ed. 2020] 9813346930, 9789813346932

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Keith Heggart

Activist Citizenship Education A Framework for Creating Justice Citizens

Activist Citizenship Education

Keith Heggart

Activist Citizenship Education A Framework for Creating Justice Citizens

Keith Heggart University of Technology Sydney Ultimo, NSW, Australia

ISBN 978-981-33-4693-2 ISBN 978-981-33-4694-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4694-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

I dedicate this work to my wife, Elizabeth, and to my children. This book is, as much as anything, an exercise in hope and possibility. Children, too, are about hope and possibility. I hope that they grow up to be justice-oriented citizens.

Foreword

The Contradictions of Citizenship Debates on citizenship cover almost every political, social and cultural dimension of the challenges contemporary societies confront: from migration policy (who should gain citizenship), crime and punishment (should convicted criminals have access to voting and other citizenship rights), to who has the right to vote (age limitations or residency status). Citizenship, however, has always been in flux and full of contradictions. It is simultaneously seen as an opportunity for liberation and freedom (think of refugees seeking safe passage) as well as a form of control governments place on their citizens (such as national service or mutual obligation programs). More so, citizenship has always been contested: from the political citizenship sought in Ancient Rome, to the suffragettes in the 1800s and 1900s, to the Civil Rights movements in the US and the anti-apartheid struggles in South Africa. Today, such struggles continue. As I write the short Preface to Dr. Heggart’s book, we are amidst the current struggles of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) reform movement which reignited across the world. From the protests in streets of Minneapolis and Los Angeles, to Sydney, Paris and Johannesburg, millions of people are protesting the discrimination that people of colour face on a daily basis including being the disproportionate target of violence by police authorities. Despite the seismic changes brought on by the Civil Rights movements 50 years ago, BLM reminds us that discrimination and targeted violence continue. The BLM movement began in 2013 with the use of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of African American teen Trayvon Martin. It has reignited following the slow suffocation of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020 while other officers watched. The shocking nine minutes it took for George Floyd to die were filmed and shared on social media around the world, sparking outrage and protests.

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In Australia, protests took place both in solidarity with what has happened in the US as well as to remind us that Aboriginal Australians continue to experience disproportionate levels of incarceration and deaths in custody. This is despite the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (1987–1991) that made sweeping recommendations about reforming the policing of Aboriginal communities almost 30 years ago. Many of these recommendations have been ignored or never appropriately implemented.

Why This, Why Now? There is never one reason that sparks such movements. One undeniable cause, however, is a sense of people feeling disempowered either through exclusion of being the target of persecution. In other words, people react this way when our democratic institutions fail them. This creates pent up anger that can be ignited. In this case, it was not only the pointless death of Mr. Floyd at the hands of a police officer, but the fact that black Americans and other minority groups had suffered the worst of the Covid19 epidemic in terms of both health and employment impacts. But such a sense of anger is not limited to one side of politics. We must also remember that the BLM protests follow five years of the insurgence of far-rightwing anti-democratic and populist movements supported by those who also feel left behind by our democratic institutions. The reaction has been to ‘tear the system down’ and hence, place our democratic institutions under stress. This was highlighted in 2016 with the election of ‘anti-establishment’ Donald Trump as the US president—sending shock waves around the world. His anticosmopolitan agenda and subsequent attacks on some of the democratic norms has seen claims that President Trump is undermining the USA Constitution itself (Arvanitakis 2020; Wehle 2020). Populist and anti-democratic governments have risen in influence and in some cases been elected across Europe including Austria and Poland. We saw the Brexit campaign that resulted in the UK vote to leave the European Union driven by populist and anti-democratic parties (Thomson 2016). In his recent book, Challis Professor of Jurisprudence Wojciech Sadurski, described Poland’s Constitutional Breakdown (2019): ‘by undermining the separation of powers, the ruling party concentrates all power in one hand, thus rendering any democratic accountability illusory’. Why have those who attack democracy become so popular in our social democracies? I would argue that, as I have noted above, there is a palpable sense that many see our democratic institutions as failing them and leaving them behind. There are three distinct reasons why this has occurred. The first is that the social contract between democratic nations and their citizens changed as nations embraced the neoliberal policies of the 1980s where the

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benefits were unevenly distributed. As major urban centres grew and attracted international investment capital for growing service, financial and information technology industries, many smaller regional cities declined. The trade deals and economic globalisation embraced by both centre-left and centre-right mainstream parties delivered many benefits for the elites but failed to deliver for the many. As globalisation accelerated, and more and more trade deals were signed, many organisations shifted their operations creating rust belts to attract capital. This undercut organised labour and placed the institutions of the welfare state in a fragile position. Without a vibrant welfare-state, the very platform for social democracies ceases to exist. This gave rise to the second reason: a sense of vulnerability for both the middle and working classes across the western world. The hollowing out of the middle class has been well documented and has created a reactionary drive towards protectionism (Elliot 2019). For many urban social democratic leaning voters—particularly those in well-paying global industries—such a reactionary response moves against their cosmopolitan tendencies. This gives rise to the third reason: different segments of the society have come into conflict creating a partisanship that has paralysed democracies. This has also created a gap between the ‘elites’ and the ‘people’ that has been exploited by populist movements. The promise of a new coal or uranium mine (or other extractive industry) may well be a concern for many in urban areas that are concerned about the effects of human-induced climate change, but for rural communities, it offers much needed economic stimulus. This takes us to a fourth and somewhat uncomfortable truth: this has given rise to a sense of anti-immigration. Mass immigration places the welfare state under pressure and when combined with a sense of scarcity, then the above-mentioned reactionary forces take a deeper hold. This does not mean that all those raising concerns about immigration are racist—though there are no doubt racists elements—but centrists have failed to make an argument for immigration. All this has translated into many as a general loss of trust in democratic processes. Lowy Institute (2020) found that: … support for democracy is … 65% of Australians saying that ‘democracy is preferable to any other kind of government’. One in five (22%) say that ‘in some circumstances, a non-democratic government can be preferable’, while 12% say that ‘for someone like me, it doesn’t matter what kind of government we have’. The gap between older and younger Australians on the importance of democracy is striking.... A majority of Australians aged 18–29 years (55%) in 2019 express a preference for democracy, compared with 68% of Australians aged over 30. In previous years this gap has been as large as 28 points. However, there is still a significant proportion (30%) of 18–29-year olds who say that ‘in some circumstances, a non-democratic government can be preferable’.

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Foreword

Justice Citizenship This loss of trust in democracies demands a response and this is exactly what Dr. Heggart presents to us with this important, timely and significant intervention. Dr. Heggart’s book reminds us that democracies can only be vibrant and functional with an empowered, engaged and educated citizenry. The tool for delivering this sense of empowerment has been a reliance on ‘civics and citizenship’ education. While many such programs have been designed with good intentions, Dr. Heggart highlights how they have struggled to gain traction for many reasons including that they are delivered by schooling systems that tend to be undemocratic and so contradict the very knowledge they are trying to import. Students are often disempowered, seen as ‘empty vessels’ waiting to be ‘filled’ with knowledge. This reinforces the sense that rather than having something to add or feel a sense of empowerment, they are citizens in waiting who will one day reach the magic marker of adulthood and be taken seriously. In this book, Dr. Heggart presents us with not only a deep critique of these traditional models but provides a new model of empowerment—justice citizenship. The framework presented here not only is about creating a more inclusive and engaging education system, but empowering young people to celebrate the mechanisms of democracy and confront the grand challenges confronting us. Dr. Heggart’s framework is based on his work as a researcher and educator across both secondary and tertiary (higher education) institutions. We are presented with a model that is theoretically sophisticated and practical in its application. These insights and Dr. Heggart’s success as an educator ensures this book is an important contribution in the fields of education, social justice, citizenship and civics. It is a book that is not only well times, but one that should form the basis of a broader curriculum reinvigoration to ensure today’s students not only receive an outstanding education, but become active, engaged and empowered citizens. June 2020

James Arvanitakis Pro Vice Chancellor (Research and Graduate Studies) Western Sydney University Australia

References Arvanitakis, J (2020) ‘Arvanitakis on American politics: Three key developments this week’, Open Forum, 30 May 2020, https://www.openforum.com.au/arvanitakis-on-american-politics-threekey-developments-this-week/. Elliott, L (2019) ‘The demise of the middle classes is toxifying British politics’, The Guardian, 3 May 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/03/demise-middle-classesbritish-politics-digital-age. Sadurski, W. (2019) Poland’s Constitutional Breakdown, Oxford University Press, London.

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Thompson, G (2016) ‘Brexit and the rise of populism’, Open Democracy UK, 21 July 2016, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/populism-biggest-winnerfrom-uk-referendum/. Wehle, K (2020) ‘Congress Has Lost Its Power Over Trump’, The Atlantic, 4 February 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/checks-and-balances-trump-has-sweptaway/606013/.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank my principal supervisor, Rick Flowers for his guidance and wisdom. He has shown me much more than how to write a book; he has shown me a little of what it means to be an academic and I am grateful for the way he has welcomed me into the academy. I would also like to thank my alternate supervisor, Nina Burridge, for her assistance and guidance. I also wish to thank all the staff in the School of Education at UTS, and those from other universities, including Akesha Horton, Joanne Yoo, Katherine Bates, Jane Hunter and James Arvanitakis, who have assisted me, challenged me and helped me develop into the fledgling scholar that I am. I also wish to thank Ms. Robyn Meddows, principal of McCarthy Catholic College, and Catholic Education, Diocese of Parramatta. I also thank all the participants in my interviews and most importantly the students who were part of Justice Citizens. I wish to thank David Bradbury and Prue Car for their support of the film festival, and Margaret and David Currie for their enthusiasm and hard work. I also thank Paul Vittles and the RSA for their interest and support for my work. I also acknowledge Terry Fitzgerald, who has assisted me with editing my work.

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Contents

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Introduction: Complexity, Wicked Problems and Citizenship Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 The Nature of Challenges Facing Liberal Democracies . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The Changing Nature of Democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Conceptualising These Challenges as Complex or Wicked Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Failure of Current Models of Citizenship Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 A Model of Complex Citizenship Education? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 The Structure of This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Portraits: An Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

5 6 7 11 13 14

2

A Resurgence of Civil Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 A Different Kind of Protest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 A Resurgence of Civil Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 What Do I Mean by Civil Action? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Looking Globally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 More Movements, or Just More Media? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 Economics and Populism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 March for Our Lives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Extinction Rebellion, 350.Org and Climate Activism . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Hong Kong and the Umbrella Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 New Forms of Protest, New Forms of Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Portrait One: Opening Credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

17 17 20 20 21 21 23 24 28 30 32 33 36

3

Apathetic or Activist? Young People, Citizenship and the Public Sphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 A Loss of Faith in Democracy? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 A Negligible Decline? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Engaged or Disengaged? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The (New) Public Sphere? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 A Communication Problem? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

37 37 39 40 43 47

1 1 3

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Contents

6 Non-linearity, Distributed Decision-Making and Interactivity . . . . . . Research Portrait Two: Theme Song . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

48 49 52

The Organisation Potential of Networks and Social Media: Challenges and Opportunities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 The Rise of the Internet and the Rise of Social Media . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The Opportunities Afforded by Social Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The Organising Potential of Social Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 New Movement ‘Cultures’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 The Risk of Rapid Growth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Protest Movements as Self-organising Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 What Does This Mean for Civics and Citizenship Education? . . . . . . Research Portrait Three: An Exciting Opening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

53 53 54 57 60 60 63 64 64 66

The ‘Failures’ of Civics and Citizenship Education in Australia . . . . 1 A Look Towards the Past… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 An Ever-Expanding Concept of Citizenship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Civics and Citizenship Education: A Long History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Democracy in Ancient Times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Active Citizen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 John Stuart Mill and Political Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 John Dewey and the Progressive Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 Criticisms of Dewey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.6 Civics and Citizenship Education: An Integrated Subject or a Stand Alone Approach? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Civics and Citizenship Education in Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Indigenous Australian Notions of Civics and Citizenship . . . . . 4.2 Citizenship Education in the Twentieth Century: Discrete or Embedded? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Portrait Four: The Montage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

69 69 70 71 71 73 74 75 78 79 81 81 83 85 87

The Current Climate for Civics and Citizenship Education . . . . . . . . 89 1 Defining the Civics Deficit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 1.1 Education for Active Citizenship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 1.2 The Civics Expert Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 1.3 The Civics Deficit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 1.4 Criticisms of the Civics Deficit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 2 Discovering Democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 2.1 Criticisms of Discovering Democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 2.2 Official Assessment of Discovering Democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 2.3 Findings from Discovering Democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 3 Values Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 4 The Current Climate of Citizenship Education in Australia . . . . . . . . 100

Contents

4.1 Civics and Citizenship in the Australian Curriculum . . . . . . . . 4.2 The Review of the Australian Curriculum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Where to for Civics and Citizenship Education? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Portrait Five: First Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

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Alternative and Non-government Organisation Forms of Civics and Citizenship Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Some Examples of School–Community Partnerships Doing Active Citizenship Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Examples of Participatory Action Research Projects Doing Citizenship Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 How Justice Citizens Is Extending Participatory Action Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Social Justice Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 The Global Citizen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Reconciliation Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 The Torch Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 Relevance to Justice Citizens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Social Media Campaigns and Civics and Citizenship Education . . . . 6.1 Aussie Democrazy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Portrait Six: Interview with Talent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A New Understanding of Civic Participation: Citizens in Action or Citizens in Waiting? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 A Contested Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 What Is a Citizen? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Contesting Views About What Should Be Included in the Civics and Citizenship Education Curriculum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Education for Public Versus Private Citizenship . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Activist Citizenship Education: Encouraging Dissent or Obedience? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Should Citizenship Be Taught Discretely or Embedded Across the Curriculum? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 McLaughlin’s Continuum of Maximal and Minimal Citizenship Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Morris and Cogan’s Multi-dimensional Models of Civics and Citizenship Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Murray Print’s Typology: Civics for Survival, for Community Service and to Exercise Leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Kerry Kennedy and Fluid Definitions of Active Citizenship: The Patriotic, Self-Regulated Entrepreneurial and Empowered Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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100 101 104 105 107 109 109 110 112 115 116 118 120 121 122 122 124 126 128 131 131 132 132 134 134 135 136 137 141 144

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9 Westheimer and Kahne’s Threefold Taxonomy: The Personally Responsible, the Participatory and Justice-Oriented Citizens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Research Portrait Seven: Interview with Talent, Part Two . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 9

Student and Adult Understandings of Active Citizenship . . . . . . . . . . 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Adult Understandings of Active Citizenship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Definitions of Citizenship: Top-Down vs Youth-Led . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Tentative Understandings of Active Citizenship . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Active Citizenship: The Adult Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Student Accounts of Active Citizenship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Portrait Eight: Working with Experts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

10 Student and Teacher Attitudes to Civics and Citizenship Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The Classroom Reality of Citizenship Education Being Delivered Through Formal Curriculum and Explicit Instruction . . . . 3 Implementing Citizenship Education Through Informal Curriculum Strategies and Implicit Istrcution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The Contradiction Between Teaching About Democracy and the Authoritarian Environment of a School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 The Challenge of Doing Citizenship Education with the Intensification of Standardised Testing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Student Experiences of Learning Active Citizenship . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Even Explicit Citizenship Education Is Not Foregrounded . . . . . . . . 8 Despite This, Some Students Are Concerned and Active Citizens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Portrait Nine: The Premiere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Justice Citizens as a Model of Complex Civics and Citizenship Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 A Brief Account of Justice Citizens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Students’ Attitudes to Justice Citizens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Problems with Justice Citizens (Backhanded Compliments) . . . . . . . 5 Making Creative Decisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Becoming Active Citizens? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Portrait Ten: Critical Reception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

153 153 153 153 154 157 160 165 167 169 169 169 171 173 175 176 177 178 183 183 186 187 187 188 189 193 197 202 203

Contents

12 Using Complexity Theory to Navigate Roadblocks in Critical Pedagogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 A Fresh Approach to Critical Pedagogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Features of Justice Citizens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Experiential Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Student-Led Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Action-Oriented Learning and Participation in the Public Sphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 School–Community Partnerships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 Critical Literacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.6 Advocacy for Systemic Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Justice Pedagogy—A New Term for Critical Citizenship Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Moving from the Linear to the Organic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Distributed Decision-Making and Non-linearity . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Self-Organising Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Emergent Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Justice Pedagogy: A Framework for Active Citizen Education . . . . . 1 The Failure of Civics and Citizenship Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The Rise of New Forms of Social Movement Organising, Led by Young People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The Recognition of Complexity and the Need for Complex Pedagogical Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Justice Pedagogy: A Framework for Active Citizenship Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Appendix One: Methodological Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227

Chapter 1

Introduction: Complexity, Wicked Problems and Citizenship Education

Abstract This chapter begins with a brief description of the challenges facing liberal democracies around the world. It then places these challenges within the discussion about how democracy itself is changing, and posits that one of the influences of this change is the increasingly complex or ‘wicked’ nature of the challenges faced by citizens and nation states. Next, there is a discussion about the failure of current models of civics and citizenship education to prepare young people for these challenges, before an alternative, complex model is proposed. The chapter concludes with an explanation of the rest of the structure of this book.

1 The Nature of Challenges Facing Liberal Democracies In many liberal democratic countries around the world, there are increasing concerns about the state of democracy. A great number of factors have been cited as contributing to these concerns. For example, in Australia, there has been a long debate about the ignorance and apathy of citizens, and especially young people (Senate Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Training 1989). In other countries, like the US, there is growing concern that young people do not value democracy as a form of government, with surprisingly high numbers supporting government by a technocracy or by a military government (Foa and Mounk 2017). In addition, there are concerns about the rise of increasingly violent movements on the far right (Berlet and Lyons 2000) and the left (LaFree 2018). There is also concern about the growing prominence of authoritarian political parties and, in some cases, their election to power in what are nominally democracies—for example, Viktor Orban coming to power in Hungary (Beauchamp 2018) or the rise of AfD in Germany (Hough 2017). Often linked to the popularity of these parties is a turning away from global perspectives in favour of embracing more insular foreign and domestic policies. For example, the EU is refusing to accept migrants or asylum seekers (Taylor 2018), the UK has deliberately excised itself from the rest of Europe via Brexit (Sharma 2016) and, in the US, a key part of Donald Trump’s popularity lies with his continued promises to build a wall between the US and Mexico (Riotta 2018). © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Heggart, Activist Citizenship Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4694-9_1

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Understandably, scholars around the world are interested in exploring the reasons why there has been this sudden turn towards authoritarianism. Parallels have been drawn to Germany in the 1930s (Browning 2018) and even the fall of the Roman Republic (Tharoor 2017). Minna Salami (2017) has suggested that it is the failure of neoliberalism that has led to this pass. Henry Giroux (2018) goes further, explicitly linking neoliberalism and what he calls proto-fascism with the rise of authoritarianism in the US. Ian Bruff explains that the rise of this form of neoliberalism is a direct attack on democracy. He writes, We are witnessing the rise of authoritarian neoliberalism, which is rooted in the reconfiguring of the state into a less democratic entity through constitutional and legal changes that seek to insulate it from social and political conflict. The apparent strengthening of the state simultaneously entails its growing fragility, for it is becoming an increasingly direct target of a range of popular struggles, demands, and discontent by way of the pressures emanating from this strengthening. (2013, p. 113)

While the examples listed above paint a dire picture for the state of democracy and civil society around the world, they do, for the most part, ignore the growing rise of new forms of social movements. These movements offer a vibrant counterpart to the developments described earlier. While it is not easy to categorise these movements, as they are diverse in focus, audience, structure and methods, it is worth noting that a number of them have become global campaigns that have galvanised large groups of people from disparate backgrounds, including young people. For example, the People’s Climate March in 2015 was a worldwide movement of people from environmental organisations, first nation groups, trade unions, church groups and other social justice organisations coming together to call for action on climate change. More than 40,000 people in Sydney alone were involved. This is one example; other examples include the #Occupy movement (Gleason 2013), Black Lives Matter (Rickford 2016) and the Women’s March (Fisher et al. 2017). It is important to recognise that, while these fledgling social movements have their strengths, especially in terms of scalability and reach, there are also concerns. Firstly, the social media platforms used to communicate and organise often have their own ideologies that shape the way that the messages are communicated and the way that the social movement is organised (Fuchs 2017). In addition, there are concerns regarding the strength of these social movements, and especially the bonds between participants. Zeynap Tufekci (2014) has suggested that the ease of organising actually limits the effectiveness of the social movement, especially when facing adversity. Both of these themes represent changing conceptions of what it means to be a citizen. Traditionally, citizenship has meant membership of a political community— a national perspective—with attendant rights and responsibilities (Marshall 1950; 1964). However, the growing dissatisfaction espoused by young people and others about the state of their democracy and their elected representatives has meant the development of new forms of citizenship—forms that often privilege direct action and participation over representation and are more global in their outlook than limited to nationalist concerns. These new forms of citizenship, which are often classified as ‘active’ (Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth

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Affairs 1989) ‘consumer’ (Christopherson 1994), ‘global’ (Falk 1993) or ‘justiceoriented’ (Westheimer and Kahne 2004a, b) are attempts to classify approaches that are often organised around issues and through social media platforms, rather than membership groups or organisations. These approaches are taking place at greater scales than in the past; there are numerous examples such as Kony 2012 or The Ice Bucket Challenge. On the other hand, traditional bastions of civil society, for example membership organisations, lobby groups, political parties and trade unions, are struggling to retain membership density as young people reconsider the efficacy of their involvement in such social and civil organisations. I am not suggesting a form of cyber-utopianism here, however; there is a need to be mindful of the inbuilt inequalities of movements that use social media like Facebook; such tools are not objectively neutral or accessible and, despite some claims, they are not the universal panacea for democratic participation that they might appear. It is vital to discuss the role and efficacy of these new approaches and what that means for civics and citizenship education as a whole, but these discussions need to start by recognising the changing nature of democracy and what that means for citizens (Nicoll et al. 2013).

2 The Changing Nature of Democracy In the past, democratic states were aided by the fact that the majority of the membership of a particular state had a common ethnicity or religious identity. Christian Joppke (2007) argues that the growth of globalisation and multiculturalism has meant that there is no longer a single identity of citizenship as relative to being a particular ethnic group. What was once the domain of a particular ethnic group, for the most part, became, in the global and multicultural world, available to a range of different ethnic, racial or religious groups. This has meant there has been a weakening of the ‘long-existing links between nation-states and their sense of ethnic homogeneity’ (Gholami 2018, p. 13). This led to the development, in countries like Australia and elsewhere, of policies which emphasis the value of diversity, and multiculturalism, and belonging. However, in a kind of reactionary politics, the response from some parts of society was to reject these approaches and calls for pluralism, and instead turn towards a kind of ethnic nationalism as citizenship. Reza Gholami explains this conception of citizenship: Being a citizen is increasingly defined as belonging and being loyal to a particular understanding of the nation-state, one that is racialized, linked to ideas of religious heritage, and plays on the notion of shared values and culture. As mentioned, this conception of citizenship creates a rift in the way diverse people, especially religious and ethnic minorities, experience their citizenship. (2018, p. 14)

This notion is similar to Banks’ (2017) notion of failed citizenship; that is, the creation of groups of people who feel like they don’t belong in the country of which they are citizens, yet do not fit this new version of citizenship. Gholami is quick to point out

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that citizenship has an individual or human aspect, as well as a political one, and decisions made by the government affect both parts—often with very serious results. This leads to the rise of different extremist groups—something that Gholami has called the ‘Age of Extremisms’—all of which present a challenge to unified notions of citizenship (Gholami 2018). It is worth mentioning that these concerns about what it means to be a citizen— and crucially, how each generation learns what that means—are historical ones. In Australia, for example, the focus on educating young people about their role of citizens dates back to at least the 1980s, where a number of senate reports raised concerns that Australians, and in particular young Australians, were ignorant and apathetic about the role of their democratic institutions. However, recent technological and geopolitical developments have exacerbated many of these concerns. In addition, states are now faced with a wide range of ongoing challenges, many of which extend beyond their borders and are beyond their control. For example, climate change, mass migration, the ubiquity of mobile technology and its effects on industries, especially manufacturing, the increasing inequality between classes and so on are all problems that are global in nature. In this context, and considering the rise of extremism as described above, the role of citizenship education becomes increasingly important. What these concerns indicate is not the fact that democracy is becoming increasingly fragile—although that might be the case in certain arenas. Instead, they identify that the very notion of democratic participation is becoming increasingly contested by a range of actors in a number of different spheres. This marks a significant difference to previous arguments about the future of democratic states. Rather than arguing about liberal or conservative approaches to democracy and rights, for example, this debate is about the very nature of what democracy is, and how best citizens and noncitizens, howsoever they might be defined—can participate in it. And young people are very much at the centre of that debate. Governments in these states are struggling to conceptualise the new developments described above. There have been attempts to develop approaches to citizenship that recognise and equip citizens to deal with global issues and challenges. The Global Education First Initiative (GEFI) from the United Nations is one such example. Another example is the most recent version of the Australian Curriculum which has three cross-curriculum priorities: one focuses on the role of Indigenous Australians, another on the need to develop sustainable ways of living and the third looks at Australia’s engagement with Asia. These, and other examples, are attempts by nations to adapt to the challenges facing them, both within and without their borders. However, it is my contention, and the central argument of this book, that these approaches are destined to failure because they are built on flawed understanding of the nature of problems facing both local and global society, and hence these educational programs do not meet the needs of young people experiencing citizenship in the twenty-first century.

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3 Conceptualising These Challenges as Complex or Wicked Problems How, then, should governments and civil society respond to these challenges facing the globe in the early twenty-first century? The first step in deciding upon an appropriate response approach relies upon recognising that the problems that citizens are going to be required to face, now and in the future, are complex ones. It follows, then, that educational practices should engage with notions of complexity in order to better prepare people for those situations. I use the term ‘complex’ advisedly; I am drawing on the work of scholars (Kurtz and Snowden 2003; Davis and Sumara 2009) who have applied complexity theory to a range of domains. Kurtz and Snowden (2003) challenged some of the basic assumptions in organisational theory, suggesting that, when humans are involved, it is foolish to assume that order is always present. They also problematise the notion that humans always make rational choices, or that every action is a result of intentional behaviour. While they acknowledge that such assumptions are true in some contexts, they argue that it is not always the case. Instead, they posit the notion of ‘unorder’, which is neither order nor chaos, but instead a different kind of order. The difference, they argue, is that an ordered system assumes that through the study of physical conditions, we can derive general, verifiable rules that will create a knowledge of best practice in the future. In an unordered domain, this is not the case: ‘In a dynamic and constantly changing environment, it is possible to pattern un-order but not to assume order’ (2003, p. 466). They describe the complex domain as one in which there is limited utility of traditional notions of cause and effect. This non-linear domains resists predictability, and only coheres retrospectively. They are dynamic and openended, populated by many different actors and agents and can behave in ways that are dissimilar to previous patterns. It is constantly changing and adapting. Crucially, the interactions and relationships between actors are central to understanding the complex nature of these situations. The notion of complex domains has proven useful in a variety of settings. Jon Norbeg and Graeme Cumming (2008) have applied resilience theory and adaptability with complexity theory in order to describe sustainability in natural environments. Sylvia Walby (2007) has used complexity theory to reinvigorate social theory in order to describe intersectionality and social inequality. It has also been used to describe the formation and development of new social movements (Chesters and Welsh 2006). A key factor in this approach is recognising that many of these complex problems are problems that extend beyond national boundaries; that is, the rapid pace of globalisation means that the challenges facing states are not only already complex, but they are becoming more complex, and therefore these problems are increasingly likely to resist simple cause and effect solutions. This seems self-evident: one might take the intractable nature of debates about climate change as one such example or the ongoing arguments about refugees, migrants and asylum seekers as another. There are three key features of complexity theory that I feel are relevant to this discussion. They are: the self-organising nature of the actors within a complex

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domain, the emergent learning that develops from within such a system and the structure of distributed knowledge and decision-making present in the domain. Much has been written about these notions, but it is worth briefly summarising here. Keith Morrison (2006) develops Kurtz and Snowden’s (2003) idea about unorder a little further. He describes the point of unorder—that location which Kurtz and Snowden might suggest as being at the boundary between complexity and chaos—as being the most creative. Rather than looking at individual elements within the domain, Morrison suggests that we need to look at as much of the domain as we can: Further, one cannot consider the organism without considering its environment; the emphasis is on collective, relational behaviour and holism rather than on isolationism, individualism and solipsism. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and these parts interact in dynamical, multifarious ways, thereby producing new realities, new collectivities and new relations. (2006, p. 2)

By doing this, he argues, we can come to understand the relationships between the elements, which is central to complexity theory. We can also determine the nature of connectedness in the system, and how knowledge is distributed throughout the system. Morrison highlights the importance of communication and collaboration as being central to this distributed networking and the decisions that arise out of it. This connectivity is also vital for the development of self-organisation. Rather than being imposed from an external source via a hierarchy or chain of command, Morrison explains that, within a complex system, self-organisation can arise spontaneously. This leads to the third key feature: from these self-organised systems there develops emergent learning. These are the new outcomes and knowledges that are not predictable; they are non-linear and divergent.

4 Failure of Current Models of Citizenship Education What, then, does this understanding of the complex nature of global problems mean for citizenship education? The first point is that it should be clear that many of the current approaches to citizenship education, especially those of a formal or top-down nature—are inadequate to prepare young people to deal with complex and wicked problems. Discovering Democracy is one such example. This program, which was taught in Australian schools between 1997 and 2007 was predicated on the notion that, in order to develop active and informed citizens, the best approach was to teach students about the mechanisms and institutions of government. It is perhaps unsurprising that such a linear pedagogy failed to inspire young people, and the approach was roundly criticised by a range of scholars (Kennedy 1997; O’Loughlin 1997). While its successor, The Australian Curriculum, has some improvements, it doesn’t go far enough in examining the complex nature of young people and the world that they are facing (Heggart et al. 2018). The failures of traditional approaches to civics and citizenship education are because they are predicated on models that use a simplistic understanding of citizenship. They assume a linear, cause and effect understanding of citizenship; that is, if

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people know about how government works, they are more likely to be ‘active citizens’—whatever that actually means. These approaches make a number of assumptions that are unrealistic when considering the complex nature of active citizenship and civic engagement. In particular, they assume both intentional capability and rational action are the only determinants in people’s behaviour—despite Kurtz and Snowden (amongst others) suggesting that such is not the case. In addition, they fail to recognise that the motivations for active citizenship are complex in and of themselves; while developing civic institutional knowledge might be a part of it, there are other numerous factors that need to be included before making any claims to the development of active citizenship. Equally importantly, any model that does make those claims needs to consider the relational or collective aspects of education and active citizenship—something that is increasingly rare in education systems. It should be noted that I do not disagree with the purpose of these citizenship education efforts. The development of active citizens—as formulated by governments and education departments all over the world—is an important goal. My concerns rest on the fact that the current pedagogies do little to meet this goal and hence are not likely to prepare young people to address the challenges that the world and democratic states are going to face in the twenty-first century. In order to remedy this, I am suggesting that citizenship education needs to focus more on the development of a new typology of active citizen. Such a model makes use of the features of complexity theory—selforganising, distributed decision-making and emergent learning—described above. In order to explicate what such an education might look like, I am going to draw on Justice Citizens, a pilot study undertaken with students in Western Sydney, Australia.

5 A Model of Complex Citizenship Education? Justice Citizens was a participatory action research project involving approximately 150 Year nine students from a Western Sydney Catholic high school. Over the course of six months, students took part in a series of structured and unstructured sessions aimed at equipping them with the skills, knowledges and attitudes to take part in their increasingly fractured civil society. Students worked with journalists, academics, community members, parents and, of course, their teachers, to identify a topic related to the theme of justice. They then investigated the complex nature of these issues, before developing a film documenting their findings. These films were shown to community members at a local film festival before being the subject of a community forum. The topics that students chose to investigate were diverse and included: domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse, the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers, climate change and water pollution, bullying, and individual freedoms for students. The theory of learning underpinning Justice Citizens was based on six key features. They were: 1. Student-led learning, 2. Action-oriented learning and participation in the public sphere,

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Experiential education, School community partnerships, Critical literacy and Advocacy for systemic change.

While it is true that many of the characteristics listed above would be familiar to any progressive or humanist educator, or, indeed, critical pedagogues, it is my contention that, by viewing these ideas through the lens of complexity theory, as described earlier, it is possible to avoid some of the philosophical and theoretical cul-de-sacs that have trapped critical pedagogues and citizenship scholars. Further, by borrowing some of the key principles from complexity theory and applying them to formulate a new framework for citizenship education, we believe that citizenship education can be enhanced in such a way that it becomes fit for purpose in this increasingly global and complex world. Firstly, let us consider the notion of self-organising systems. It is worth noting the similarities between critical pedagogical notions of grassroots organising and activism (Staples 2012) and self-organising systems, but the crucial aspect as it applies to civics and citizenship education is the relationship between self-organising systems and action-oriented learning and student-led learning (as evidenced in Justice Citizens). Many advocates of progressive education seek a form of student-centred learning as part of citizenship education. However, I feel that citizenship education needs to go further and become what I am describing as student-led. This is possible because citizenship education is different to many other subjects taught in high school; despite the prevailing narrative that young people are ‘citizens in waiting’ (Maitles and Gilchrist 2004) the reality is that they are already highly political, knowledgeable and active in their communities in a variety of different ways. In order to recognise this, complex citizenship education should begin with the rejection of top-down, authoritarian dictates about pedagogical and curricular requirements, such as those demanded by traditional, government-led curriculum. Instead, it should be replaced with a form of self-organising education, where students determine what to learn and how they are to learn. Crucially, such a structure would emerge organically from within the classroom; the role of the teacher in this instance is to become a kind of facilitator or an environment preparer, rather than a directly instructing teacher. This marks a difference between this approach and progressive philosophies to education; even within student-centred classrooms, there is a great deal of emphasis placed on the role of the teacher, even when she or he is not necessarily acting as a didact. However, within a complex citizenship education classroom, the role of the teacher is less obtrusive. There are two further points work making; firstly, the notion of self-organising recognises the collectivity of the group or class; that is, there is less of an emphasis on the progress of an individual, but rather a recognition of the development of the group as a whole, as well as the relationships between the individual elements in the group. Paul Hager and David Beckett explain: In opposition to reduction, [generalized] complexity requires that one tries to comprehend the relations between the whole and the parts. The knowledge of the parts is not enough, the knowledge of the whole as a whole is not enough, if one ignores its parts; one is thus

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brought to make a come and go in a loop to gather the knowledge of the whole and its parts. Thus, the principle of reduction is substituted by a principle that conceives the relation of whole-part mutual implication. (2019, p. 10)

Secondly, a student-led classroom is not enough; to truly embrace complex citizenship, there needs to be a focus on action-oriented learning. This links closely with Paolo Freire’s (1970) ideas about praxis. Imre Semetsky has suggested that self-organising is essential for growth—or action, in this example. He writes that complexity is ‘a self-organising communicative process that leads to growth and an increase in complexity’ (Semetsky 2008, p. 87). Within Justice Citizens, it was a particular challenge for the teachers involved to take a step away from the traditional classroom organising structures and instead allow the organisation to develop organically. Nevertheless, as teachers became more proficient in the role of facilitator, they also become more capable in providing the environment that allowed such organisation to develop. And, as students expanded to fill the space left by the diminished teacher presence, that self-organisation did develop. Students formed organic groups to work on their research projects, often navigating across the traditional boundaries and instead of forming relationships with other students on the basis of shared experience (in the case of students researching domestic violence) or common interest (in the case of students interested in environmental issues). In addition, Justice Citizens participants remained resolutely focused on action as well as their learning; this was evident in the ongoing involvement in students in their topics that they explored. This action was characterised by two different types: firstly, there were the students that leveraged the contacts that they had made to continue to pursue their interest. For example, as a result of their work on climate change and environmental activism, a number of students became organisers in a local environmental action group. Other students used their skills and ideas to pursue other interest. For example, one group of students, who had made a film about bullying, instead chose to use their organising skills to seek election to the student representative council the following year. Such an organic approach is ideally suited to working within the complex problems of today’s societies. The second theme is that of distributed knowledges and decision-making. This is closely related to the development of self-organising systems as described above. By adopting complexity thinking notions of distributed decision-making and nonlinearity, it is possible to move beyond the role of the teacher as being singularly important to learning and instead begin to consider the behaviour of the whole environment, which will be a result of the actions of a diverse range of participants. Thus, classroom learning spaces need to reflect that knowledge and learning does not, as some would suggest, flow directly from the teacher or the instructor to the student (or vice versa), who passively accepts it. Rather, it is a many-fold and multidirectional process, where learning occurs between the teacher and student, but also student to the teacher, and students to students, and that this process should be acknowledged as part of learning. This means that decision-making, if it is to be informed and based on all of the participants’ understandings, should be distributed

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and not strictly hierarchical. Although this sounds inimical to a well-ordered classroom, this is precisely the point. Keith Morrison writes that these conditions unorder ‘support greater connectivity, networking and information sharing among students and teachers’ (2008, p. 22). Although not specifically writing about critical approaches to education, Davis and Sumara describe the role that distributed decision-making plays in complexity theory approaches to education in a way that delocalises the nexus of power: Pragmatically speaking, with regard to shared/distributed work or understandings, the upshot is that a person should never strive to position herself or himself (or a text or other figurehead) as the final authority on matters of appropriate or correct action. Structures can and should be in place to allow students to participate in these decisions. For us, then, an important element in effective educational and research practices is the capacity to disperse control around matters of intention, interpretation, and appropriateness. (2009, p. 42)

This was expressed in Justice Citizens via the notions of critical literacy, as well as advocacy for systemic change. The development of critical literacy meant that students were able to recognise aspects of knowledge that were unproblematised or unchallenged; the development of advocacy for systemic change meant students were equipped to challenge and seek to change these representations of power. Such an instance has been well described: For instance, because a complexity perspective sets up the conditions whereby learning outcomes are considered uncertain, curricular content itself must be flexible and will, accordingly, facilitate behaviours and practices that are non- linear and on-going. By contrast, behaviourist notions of certainty lead to fixed curricular content resulting in the standardising of pupils’ and teachers’ behaviours and practices. This behaviourist curriculum is thus concerned with predetermined outcomes, as well as the mechanistic delivery of material to pupils who are considered to be on linear learning trajectories. (Jess et al. 2011, p. 182)

Such an approach was evident in Justice Citizens. Although I had originally expected students to identify topics that I felt were important—for example, I wanted them to look at topics like homelessness or racism—the students responded by identifying topics for their films which they felt were more relevant to the local communities. Students also had a lot of leeway in deciding how best to approach the task of filmmaking. Some chose to attend technical training sessions that we provided, while others preferred an ‘experiment and see’ approach. This is an example of the way that the decision-making power did not rest solely in our hands as teachers, but was more equally shared between all participants in the class. Finally, there is the notion of emergent learning and transdisciplinarity in complexity thinking (Davis and Sumara 2009 ), which is used to describe the new learnings that take place within a complex system, usually as a result of the interaction between the disparate elements within the system. This developed in Justice Citizens via the focus on experiential learning and the links between the school and the greater community. The new learning affects both the teacher and students, as much as either of those terms have any meaning in complex system, and is characterised by being unpredictable and student-directed. This suggests that educators need to be mindful not only of the content of the learning, or the pedagogical approaches that they adopt, but also the environment

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provided for that learning to take place in. Speaking more broadly, it suggests that educators need to build partnerships that extend beyond the boundaries of educational institutions in a real and authentic way, rather than erecting artificial walls between schools and communities. I think that this feature was perhaps the most obvious one displayed during Justice Citizens. The emergent learning took place for both ourselves and the students—and, we imagine, a number of other people involved in the project. For example, we feel that we became literate in the concerns that young people described as issues in their local communities, and we also became literate in how they felt those concerns might be addressed. The participants, on the other hand, began to explore learning which [arose] out of the interaction between a number of people and resources, in which the learners organise and determine both the process and to some extent the learning destinations, both of which are unpredictable. The interaction is in many senses self-organised, but it nevertheless requires some constraint and structure. It may include virtual or physical networks, or both. (Williams et al. 2011, p. 42)

Emergent learning has much in common with constructivist ideas about learning, but it is broader in meaning because there is the recognition that not only is learning coconstructed by the participants in the learning process, but there is also the potential for entirely new and exciting learning to take place, to which all participants, but especially the teacher, must be alive.

6 The Structure of This Book The themes that I discussed above (distributed decision-making and non-linearity, emergent learning and self-organising systems) are important because they bridge the gap between current models of citizenship education and the complex realities facing young people today. The problems facing western liberal democracies are complex and challenging. Issues like the rise of anti-democratic movements, climate change, mass migration and the unequal distribution of resources cross borders and are interrelated in an unpredictable and often chaotic way. Traditional didactic forms of civics and citizenship education, and even more progressive, student-centred forms, fail to recognise the complex nature of these problems and do not prepare young people to address their concerns in a meaningful way. In contrast, a notion of civics and citizenship education that embraces complexity and seeks to prepare young people to engage with an increasingly complex world, might better help young people navigate these complex spaces. We suggest that such an approach might be informed by complexity theory, by borrowing three key ideas. These ideas are the notion of emergent learning, self-organising systems, and distributed knowledges and decision-making. Taken together, they provide a framework for a complex model of citizenship education that emphasises the need for all citizens to be able to work in domains characterised by irrationality, non-linearity and unpredictability.

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In Sect. 1, I discuss the emergence of these themes and how they correspond to notions of complexity theory and complexity pedagogy. In Chapter 2, I describe the resurgence of civil activity, social movements and protests in Australia and around the world. I explore movements like March 4 Our Lives, The Umbrella Movement and the School Strike 4 Climate. As I do so, I describe how they demonstrate emergent forms of learning. In Chapter 3, I engage with the notion of apathetic youth; I consider whether the conflicting views of young people either being engaged or apathetic is actually symptomatic of them employing new ways of engaging in civil society, and how these new forms of engagement rely on notions like non-linearity, distributed decision-making and interactivity. In Chapter 4, I consider how the growth of social media and mobile technology has meant that social movements have new and powerful ways of organising, and are much more capable of reaching far beyond previous geographies. I also reflect on the dangers present in these new tools, before considering whether this is evidence of self-organising systems within a complex environment. In Sect. 2, I change my focus to consider the history of civics and citizenship education in order to demonstrate how it has not embraced the opportunities (and the problems) present in our complex world. In Chapter 5, I begin by exploring the failure of traditional civics and citizenship models and how those failures are related to an insistence on ‘thin’ or minimalist models of civics and citizenship education, applied in a didactic, top-down and government mandated approach. In Chapter 6, I examine Discovering Democracy and civics and citizenship within the Australian Curriculum as exemplars of this narrow, and ultimately unfruitful approach, before, in Chapter 7, I examine some ‘thicker’ approaches to civics and citizenship education from alternative and non-government providers, as well as teacher-led approaches that make use of social media. In this chapter, I suggest that such approaches do a better job of embracing complexity, and thus are more likely to be successful in meeting the stated aims of developing active and informed citizens. In Sect. 3, I interpret the data that I have gathered. I begin by summarising a number of different philosophies and typologies related to civics, citizenship and education in Chapter 8. This leads into, in Chapter 9, a discussion of student and teacher understandings of active citizenship, gathered as part of the Justice Citizens project. Following that I explore those groups’ attitudes to civics and citizenship education in Chapter 10. In the final section, Sect. 4, I theorise about a new form of civics and citizenship education, inspired by complexity theory and pedagogy, that I have named Justice Pedagogy. I begin by describing the main features of Justice Citizens, as well as sharing insights from the participants into the program in Chapter 12, I explain how these key features of Justice Citizens relate to both critical pedagogy and complexity theory, and suggest a fresh approach to civics and citizenship education. Finally, in Chapter 13, I conclude by explaining the framework of Justice Pedagogy, as well as outlining avenues for further research and limitations.

Research Portraits: An Introduction

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Research Portraits: An Introduction It is worth noting that the data in this book is not presented in a traditional way; rather than a number of chapters wherein I discuss my data and findings, I have crafted a number of narrative vignettes or research portraits, as first described by Lawrence-Lightfoot (1983). These are a series of chronologically ordered narrative accounts about my experiences as a teacher-observer before and during the teaching of Justice Citizens. I have chosen this approach because I it allows me to share the ‘rich description’ that is so integral to developing an understanding of the Justice Citizens project. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot (1983) (see also Lawrence-Lightfoot and Hoffman Davis 1997) developed research portraiture as an inductive research method, ‘to explore participant’s experiences and the complexities of how meanings are produced within a particular context’ (Gaztambide-Fernandez et al. 2011, p. 4). Research portraiture is an approach to research that embraces complexity and contradiction; it seeks understanding, rather than to prove or disprove any particular theory. This makes it particularly valuable for educational research, especially in fields like citizenship education, where there has been a lot of contestation and argument about different theories. Also important is the fact that research portraiture does not begin from a deficit model; that is, it does not begin with the question, ‘What is wrong in schools’? Instead, it focuses on ‘local meanings’ and ‘seeks goodness’ (p. 5). Research portraiture is effective because it narrows the gap between narrative and analysis. In some ways, it is more honest in its approach than other qualitative methodologies because Recognizing that descriptions are always interpretive, the portraitist uses creative writing to carefully craft a narrative that integrates her analysis of the data while also leaving the text open for interpretation. (Gaztambide-Fernandez et al., p. 5)

Using research portraiture the researcher combines interpretation and analysis with narrative aspects. Naturally, this includes weaving together the researcher’s own personal context with the experiences of the research participants to such an extent that the line between researcher and research participants becomes increasingly blurred; thus research portraiture becomes truly interpretive. Through these portraits, it is possible to make real those parts of the educational world that are often excluded from research. This attention to detail and description means that there is a more holistic approach to the data, which evokes a feeling of authenticity—something that qualitative research is often criticised for lacking. According to Hackmann, research portraiture ‘makes the researcher’s biases and experiences explicit, in essence becoming a lens through which the researcher processes and analyses data’ (2002, p. 52). The research portraits presented throughout this book have been crafted after reviewing the interviews that I conducted with each student and stakeholder, as well as the notes I took as the teacher-observer during the Justice Citizens project. By crafting these research portraits, I believe I have met two goals: first, I have come to better understand young peoples’ conceptions of citizenship and the ways they see

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themselves as active participants in the space of their local communities; and second, the portraits provide a meaningful way to share my findings with other interested parties.

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Taylor, P. (2018, March 7). EU to migrants: Go home and stay home. Retrieved December 10, 2018, from https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-migration-refugees-drop-dead-angela-mer kel-matteo-salvini-libya-italy-germany-refugees/. Tharoor, I. (2017, October 30). How the republic starts to fall. Retrieved December 10, 2018, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/10/30/how-the-rep ublic-starts-to-fall/. Tufekci, Z. (2014). Social movements and governments in the digital age: Evaluating a complex landscape. Journal of International Affairs, 68(1), 1–18. Retrieved December 10, 2018, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/24461703. Walby, S. (2007, December 1). Complexity theory, systems theory, and multiple intersecting social inequalities. Retrieved December 10, 2018, from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/ 0048393107307663. Westheimer, J., & Kahne, J. (2004a). What kind of citizen? The politics of educating for democracy. American Educational Research Journal, 41(2), 237–269. Westheimer, J., & Kahne, J. (2004b). Educating the “good” citizen: Political choices and pedagogical goals. PS: Political Science and Politics, 37(2), 241–247. Williams, R., Karousou, R., & Mackness, J. (2011). Emergent learning and learning ecologies in Web 2.0. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 12(3), 39–59.

Chapter 2

A Resurgence of Civil Action

Abstract This chapter will begin by recognising that there is a resurgence of civil action in Australia and around the world. It will use examples such as Extinction 350.org, Global Climate Strikes, Gun Control Protests, Womens’ Marches and so on to make this point. It will develop this argument by exploring how much of this is either by, for or with young people; with young people either leading or in positions of significant responsibility in marches and social movements. This chapter will also acknowledge that there are increasing numbers of anti-democratic actions which often cloak themselves in the guise of progressive movements but care little for diverse and healthy democracy. The chapter will conclude by presenting the key questions and focus for this book: what can we learn from these movements about how young people conceive of active citizenship, and how should that inform our work as citizenship educators?

1 A Different Kind of Protest This was different. I remember thinking that, on Friday, September 20, 2019, as I and thousands of others packed into the courtyard near Town Hall for Sydney’s version of the School Strike for Climate. It was a profusion of colour, noise and excitement, conducted in what seemed to be genuine goodwill and tolerance. I’d walked up, with a few colleagues, from our offices in Ultimo, along George St and through the heart of the city until we’d stopped, unable to get any further due to the sheer volume of people present at the protest. Building on the earlier protests started by the Swedish environmental activist (and school student) Greta Thunberg, students across Sydney had made it clear that they wished to join in what was a rapidly growing global movement protesting about government inaction on climate change. There were young people everywhere—from primary school students in large groups, with their teachers looking incredibly nervous about the huge numbers of people, to groups of high school students, in groups of three or four or even ten, wearing their uniforms proudly, perhaps for the first time.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Heggart, Activist Citizenship Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4694-9_2

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Those groups of students had been joined by other groups that swelled the numbers of those attending. There were environmental groups and trade unions and senior citizens groups. There were families, individuals and of course, the ubiquitous Socialist Alliance and Green Left distributing their pamphlets and newspapers. There were beach balls being tossed from hand to hand and banners, many amusing, some rude, often both, held aloft and waved at every opportunity. But there was something about it all that felt very different to me. As I stood there, in the courtyard, the ebb and flow of people pushing me to and fro, it took me a while to work out exactly what the difference was. And then I realised what it was: young people. Protests and marches aren’t something that’s new to me. At this point, I’d been a teacher for more than 20 years, and a union officer and Organiser for five years, too. Protests, marches, petitions and social movements were something with which I was intimately familiar. I’d attended previous climate strikes, and marches about Australia’s treatment of refugees. I’d been to protest rallies and strikes and sit ins. I’d stood on picket lines and signed people up via petition. I’d been to more than my fair share of May Day marches, as well as protests and strikes relating to conditions for teachers and support staff working in schools. In many cases, I’d helped organise them, marshalled them, handed out banners and flags and megaphones, and collected them all in at the end. I’d lost count of the number of petitions I had signed for one cause or another. And parts of the School Strike were familiar to me. There were lots of union groups there. Appropriately enough, I could see the Independent Education Union and the Australian Education Union, as well as the National Tertiary Education Union. There were also flags from the Financial Services Union and perhaps, surprisingly, the Electrical Trades Union. There were also the banners and flags and the general goodwill that often occurs at these events—it’s one of the great pleasures of being an Organiser—the sense of camaraderie that results from so many people being in one place for the same purpose. There were also plenty of familiar faces that I recognised from past events. But the thing that was different was that this protest was filled with young people. They were everywhere I looked, mingling with other groups. They were in school uniform—or not. Some were senior students, probably almost or already 18, but others, carefully being shepherded by parents and teachers, looked like they were still in primary school. In all my civil activism, I had never seen so many young people involved. Many of the protests I had attended previously weren’t dominated by youth. In fact, there was often only a limited representation. Certainly, in my work as a Union Organiser, I’d grown increasingly concerned at the lack of representation of young people in the decision-making bodies of the union—so concerned that I’d established a working group made up of young members in an effort to increase representation. The events that we’d organised for teachers and support staff—professional development, industrial education, chapter and branch meetings—seemed to be dominated by older, more experienced teachers. Many of the young teachers I spoke to—by no means all, but still a significant majority—were ‘too busy’ to be involved in the union. Or they were concerned about not getting a permanent position and didn’t want to risk

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being seen as an activist. Amongst other organisers, there was almost a lazy shorthand about the way that young people were talked about. They were seen to not be joiners—in other words, they weren’t interested in being part of the union, although they were all too happy to reap the benefits of pay rises and improved working conditions. Amongst some union officials, there was a barely hidden contempt for young people: ‘they’re not union’. Amongst other union officials, there was genuine concern about declining memberships, but not too many solutions, even as the situation appeared to become critical. There were myriad reasons why young people weren’t joining unions—cost of living, biased media representation, unions being seen as old fashioned and parents not teaching their children about unions were all canvassed, but no real reversal in the decline. And in my research, I’d become familiar with the argument that young people in Australia, and indeed around the world, are too often seen as apathetic and ignorant. Indeed, it was just such a statement, from a Senate Committee Report, about all Australians and young people in particular, that had kickstarted my interest in young people and civic and citizenship education. Young people, it was argued, were increasingly likely to consider other forms of government to democracy, some even indicating a preference for authoritarian or ‘strongman’ forms of government. Even if they preferred democratic government, they were often woefully ignorant about the nature of that government, its mechanisms and institutions, and their role within it. Again, there were a lot of reasons posited for this, including the increasing use of technology and social media, the loss of faith in traditional media, computer games and, of course, teachers and the education system. While I might have agreed that some young people might be ignorant about the exact minutiae of the Westminster system of government, I certainly wouldn’t suggest that most young people were disinterested in political events and their effect on their lives. It seemed that, despite what people claimed about young people, the vast numbers of young people gathered at places like Sydney Town Hall across Australia and the world, suggested otherwise. I wondered what some of those people would make—were making—of the School Strike for Climate. Certainly, it seemed at odds to the arguments about young people being ignorant and apathetic. It also suggested that there was a sizeable element of determination amongst the young people taking part, too; in the weeks leading up the climate protest, members of the Australian Government had been quick to argue that young people shouldn’t be ‘skipping school’ to go to protests. Other commentators wanted to argue about whether it was even possible for students to strike. Despite the discouragement, the young people were here, and in huge numbers. It was hard to argue that they weren’t involved. But the School Strike for Climate was about much more than involvement. I remember when one of the leaders of the movement, a young woman, stood on the balcony at Town Hall and welcomed the strikers below her. She was a school student, and how she had come to be the spokesperson for the event, I don’t know. But what struck me powerfully was the point that she made— while the other supporting groups, the unions and the environmental campaigners and social movements, the political groups and others were welcome, this was a young people’s strike. They were in charge of it, and it was going to be up to them

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to make something out of the momentum they’d created. There was an element of self-determination present in her words. It was like the student strikers had decided that they could no longer rely on adults to sort out the problems they were facing, and had instead decided to do what they could to take action. Looking around me at the numbers of people at the protest, it was an impressive start.

2 A Resurgence of Civil Action 2.1 What Do I Mean by Civil Action? Before engaging in any discussion about the protest movements that have swept the globe in the period between 2010 and 2020, it’s worth describing exactly what I meant when I talk about terms like protest movements and civil action, as it’s a point of some contention for many scholars. As I will discuss in later chapters, there has been much made of the apparent decline of young people’s participation in social and civic life. The evidence for this decline is often (but not always) related to the declining memberships in participatory organisations. In Australia, the plunging rates of union membership is often provided as an example, but there are also other, less political organisations that appear to be struggling to capture young people’s interests, such as sporting clubs or community groups. While this might be true (and I discuss this in more detail later), these are the only evidences of one form of civic participation, and often exclude other forms, such as online participation or attendance at events that have more than one purpose. A good example of these cross-purpose events is the Landcare for Singles event which combines speed dating and speed planting! I wanted to avoid such obvious omissions, so in determining what case studies and materials to include in this book, I have deliberately cast a wide net and made use of a very broad definition of what constitutes civic action. In short, I am looking for any kind of action that involves people working together with the aim of seeking to cultivate positive social change. The ‘working together’ part is not solely restricted to face to face events; rather, I would consider young people engaging in an online campaign to be working together. In addition, I think it’s important to include both ongoing campaigns (such as March for Our Lives, discussed below) and single events, such as some of the climate protests, as well as those that move between the two. Within this broad definition, there is scope to consider both small and large groups, online, offline and combinations of both, and a repertoire of action that extends from large scale protest movements that mobilise hundreds of thousands of people across many different countries, to very small actions by groups of two or three—and in a range of both deliberately constructed and also opportunistic contexts.

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2.2 Looking Globally Of course, the School Strikes for Climate need to be placed within a broader, international context if we are to make sense of them. Indeed, there is an argument to be made that the marches are not the start of anything, but instead symptoms of a much broader resurgence in civil action that is taking place around the world. As other symptoms of this resurgence, we could place movements like the US March for Our Lives (about gun control), and the Women’s Marches. We could also include the transnational Extinction Rebellion protests and civic actions, as well as the #Occupy movement and Las Indignadas in Spain. There are also the revolutions across the Arab world, often called The Arab Spring including Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey and others. Iceland’s Kitchenware Revolution could be included in this category, too, as well as more recently, the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong. This is just a small selection of the various protests that have captured the interest of the world’s media—and, indeed, the interests of many scholars of social movements and civic activism. While there is some commonality amongst some examples of these protests, and it might even be possible to draw a family tree of sorts between the different protests and social movements indicating how they have influenced—and continue to influence—each other, it is important to keep in mind that many of these protests have radically different starting contexts, different aims and different mechanisms for achieving those aims. Indeed, even the definition of what success might look like for these movements is likely to be different. The purpose of this book is not to engage in a detailed study of these movements in an attempt to draw out common themes and factors or to theorise about how these movements are constructed. Nor is it to explore the way that social media technology has influenced the growth and development of these social movements, and, perhaps in some ways, hindered them as well. Rather, this book is seeking to explore what civics and citizenship educators might learn from such movements about how best to teach young people to engage in active and justice-oriented citizenship practices within their schools, communities and wider contexts.

2.3 More Movements, or Just More Media? Having said that, it’s informative to briefly examine a few of these movements to explore what we can learn in relation to the nature of social movements and protest in the twenty-first century; such a starting point will inform the later discussion about our role as educators. The first point that is worth exploring is whether there is, as appears at first glance, an increasing number of such movements. Are more people willing to take to the streets about particular issues, and engage in a very direct form of democratic expression, or is there simply more media coverage of these movements, as the world’s media follows one similar story after another? If there is a resurgence in this kind of civil action, what is the mechanism or mechanisms that

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has led to this? And what role have new social media technologies played in this development? Are these new social movements, or old social movements using new tools? And is this a new phenomenon, or a resurgence of previously dormant social movements? Certainly, many of the scholars who have studied these movements argue that there has been a recent and significant growth in the activity and number of these movements. Manuel Castells suggests that the internet was crucial in this resurgence. He describes their growth and spread as a ‘contagion’ (2015, p. 2) which was marked by the ease with which not just words but images and video were able to be spread beyond traditional geopolitical borders. Nor is Castells alone in this assessment. Zeynap Tufekci (2017) adopts a similar position, suggesting that there has been growth in social movement organising because of the capacities of digital connectivities. She argues that social media added new tools to social movements repertoires of protest, as well as ensuring that disparate groups of dissidents—even those with different causes and goals—were able to find each other more quickly. Tufekci, however, strikes a note of caution about the affordances provided by social media, especially in terms of the long-term sustainability of social movements and civic activism. She writes that, through her study, she had become much less optimistic and significantly more cognisant of the tensions between these protestors’ digitally fuelled methods of organising and the long-term odds of their having the type of political impact, proportions to their energy, that they sought. (2017, p. xi)

According to Akaev et al. (2017), the Arab Spring, as it came to be known, was the trigger for a new phase of global transition. They argue that the world system is undergoing a transition to a new state of global protest activity. This transition is connected not so much with the development of new communication technologies as their widespread diffusion. The upswing in protest movements, beginning in the second decade of the twenty-first century, was directly related to the diffusion of the internet, social media, mobile communications and the social networks that are supported by these technologies. Akaev et al. argue that there is a pattern that dictates these phase transitions, based on Kondratieff waves. Originally interested in economic variations, Kondratieff explored indicators of prices, interest rates, foreign trade and noted that they rose and fell in a cyclical pattern. As this pattern fell a large number of important discoveries and inventions in the technique and production of communicate (were) made, which, however, (were) usually applied on a large scale only at the beginning of the next long upswing. (Kondratieff 1935 in Akaev et al. 2017, p. 111)

A previous example of an upswing in global protest movements occurred in the 1960s. Akaev et al. (2017) argue that the cause of this increase was the emergence of new communication technologies and the speed at which they entered the mainstream. Crucially, even though these technologies were principally developed during the 1950s, it wasn’t until the 1960s that there was a sharp increase in global protest activity. This is because of the time taken for the technology to become mainstream enough to be used for the protests. Global protest activity then declined (from the

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peak of the 1960s, although it still remained higher than previous decades) until the next peak—beginning around 2011. According to Akaev et al., the reason for this new peak was the new wave of growth of global information connectivity, as well as the improvement of the means of protest self-organization due to the spread of various technologies of the Fifth Kondratieff cycle (the Internet, satellite television, Twitter and other social networks, mobile telephony etc.). Once again, while the spread of these technologies was going on for many years before 2011, their internal colossal potential for generating and spreading protest activity was realized in one leap. (Akaev et al. 2017, p. 113)

2.4 Economics and Populism While technology, and especially social media, no doubt has a role to play, other scholars are quick to point out that there still needs to be economic and political reasons to trigger protest movements. Again, it is foolhardy to attempt to find a framework that fits all of the above-mentioned social movements and protest actions, but it is nevertheless informative to explore some of the political and economic factors that have influenced some of these protest and social movements. According to Cayla (2019), protest movements based in the European Union (although I think there is a similar case to be made both in Australia and the US) are linked to the emergence of a contemporary populism that’s central premise is the rejection of globalisation and the ‘elite’ ruling classes. Drawing on Polanyi and MacIver (1944) and the double movement framework, Cayla argues that the emergence of populism is directly related to the growth in globalisation. Using the European Union as an example, Cayla describes how the Single Act Treaty of 1986 effectively divorced the economic sphere of influence from the political one, and that led to a crisis of validity for some important social institutions. The rise (and indeed, the diversity of forms) of populism is based on an attempt to preserve some of these national institutions. Castells (2015) suggests some similarities between this rise of populism and the events that happened in the Middle East. In exploring the Tunisian revolution in 2010, Castells makes the point that there was a strong presence of the professional class—mostly unemployed, educated youth. There was also the presence of unionised workers—but not their leaders. Crucially, in a similar point to the one that Cayla was making about Europe, the protests in Tunisia had very limited presence of opposition political parties; the protestors were angry not just about the government, but about the system that had resulted in the current state of affairs. This is something that Castells identified in other protests, too, including Las Indignadas in Spain and #Occupy in the US and around the world: the deliberate rejection of established leaders in favour of horizontal hierarchies and consensus-based approaches. Of course, in the case of some of these protests and social movements, this led to the strengthening of authoritarian regimes, a point that Morozov (2011) is quick to point out.

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Castells (and others, it must be said) makes the point that the social movements that swept the world beginning in 2010 were not solely the direct result of either economic crises or authoritarian regimes (or both). Such occurrences had taken place before, in some cases only a few short years before the 2010s, and, in many cases, protests had been ruthlessly crushed. However, there were some similarities with previous crises: people in the affected communities had grievances that they felt were not being addressed through the traditional channels of activism (i.e. the government and other political institutions). This meant that they were more likely to utilise alternative forms of action—often, as in these cases, direct action against the government, with the aim of reinventing their current state of government to one that would better facilitate addressing their grievances. However, there was a second major feature that was important in these protest movements, and this one was new: the presence of what Castells describes as an ‘autonomous communicative capacity’ (p. 222). In other words, members of a community were able to communicate with each other, with people they didn’t know, and with wider society as a whole—and these networks were not under the direct control of governmental or other aligned parties. These networks were used to organise and to share information—with, it must be said, varying degrees of success. It is clear that the causes of these social movements are as diverse as the movements themselves. However, as Castells and others have identified, one common theme is the role that digital and social media has to play. It is this aspect that I think is particularly intriguing. As discussed in the introduction, the global and local environments which led to the development of these social movements, and the movements themselves, are complex systems. There are significant and unexpected interactions between the actors within the systems and this leads to emergent learning opportunities. In order to more closely examine the nature of some of these social movements, I am going to describe a number of them in detail. I have chosen the examples below for a number of reasons; firstly, as this is a book about civics and citizenship education, it made sense to include social movements that have involved young people. And secondly, in order to better understand the scope and diversity of these social movements, I have attempted to draw on examples that have a wide reach, either nationally or internationally.

3 March for Our Lives It is an unfortunate fact that school shootings in the US are a regular occurrence. According to the BBC, there was a school shooting, on average, once every eight days in 2018. Perhaps the most infamous in terms of media coverage was the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. On February 14, 2018, a former student of the school, Nikolas Cruz, killed 17 current students at the school. It became the most deadly school shooting in US history, surpassing the Columbine shooting in 1999, which led to 15 deaths.

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As is the case, this tragedy immediately prompted an outcry and a demand for changes to the gun laws in the US. In the past, such calls have been led by public figures or parents of victims and have struggled to engender any meaningful response. The political response is a well-worn one, offering ‘thoughts and prayers’ and, it appears, little hope of any real change. However, the response in the case of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High was different in one crucial aspect: this time the calls for change were led by the students of the schools themselves, who had seen their classmates killed. In a somewhat surprising turn of events, the students organised themselves and immediately started demanding changes. They formed an advocacy group called Never Again MSD, and immediately started lobbying for a change in the state gun laws. In less than a month, the governor of Florida, Rick Scott, had capitulated to their demands, and made a swathe of legislative changes, including raising the age requirements for purchasing guns, establishing waiting periods and mental health checks for gun buyers, and banning the sale of bump stocks (devices which turn semi-automatic weapons into fully automatic ones). However, the students were not satisfied solely with those successes. In addition, they organised a nationwide walk out of school students—the Enough! National School Walk Out—exactly one month after the shooting. More than 3000 schools and almost one million students participated in the walk out which was marked by 17 minutes of silence. There was also the March for Our Lives, which took place on March 24, in Washington, DC and more than 800 other sites around the US. Somewhere between 200,000 and 800,000 people participated in the march and, in a similar fashion to the School Strike for Climate, all of the speakers were either high school students or younger. Now, more than two years later, Never Again MSD appears to be continuing to grow in power and influence. Through the formation of local chapters, they have begun campaigning, directly targeting politicians who take money from the powerful gun lobby and the National Rifle Association (NRA). According to their website, they have successfully mobilised young people around this issue. The 2018 mid-term elections saw the youth voter turnout increase by 47%, which was the highest youth voter turnout in US election history. In addition, more than 46 NRA backed candidates lost their elections. Although the battle to change America’s gun laws is a long way from being won by these students (and it must be said, politicians and the National Rifle Association are intent on fighting the students politically and legally), it is interesting to note that the students seemed to be able to cut through the usual arguments and vacillations far more effectively than previous advocates. This notion has captured the interest of a number of scholars. Yaffe puts it this way: How were these teens, notorious as “digital natives” with short attention spans, able to command the attention of a news-weary American public? How were they able to ignite the passions of students all over the country? How were they able to stand up to conspiracy theories claiming they were funded by George Soros or CNN? How were they able to persist where others had given up? (2018, p. 195)

Indeed, this speaks to the Schrodinger-like nature of the way young people are characterised. On the one hand, they are clearly active, as in the case of these student.

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Yet on the other, they are regularly criticised for being disengaged, switched-off, wrapped up in their social media worlds. I discuss this more thoroughly in a later chapter, but it’s interesting to note that Yaffe attributes the success of the students, in part, to their engagement with social media. In particular, he argues that this generation grew up learning how to get what they want, from the internet. The immediacy of their lives on the internet—where information and communication are ever present and only one click or tap away—had transmitted itself into their engagement with politics. They were not satisfied with the previously slow timeframe and instead wanted immediate results—which, it must be said, they got, at least in Florida. Coburn (2018) argues that, while social media and the internet had a relevance, the reason there was so much cut through was because the campaign and protests were in the voices of the young peoples themselves. For Coburn, this was firstly evidence of the success of the public schooling, but he also argues that it ‘suggests a far more significant movement for democratic change is taking root’ (2018). In particular, Coburn argues that this may well be the start of popular movement politics in the US. He draws on the work of Kristin Goss, who wrote about the absence of a popular movement for gun control in the wake of another school shooting at Sandy Hook, Philadelphia, in 2012. The March For Our Lives movement, though, is a sign that there has been a change, and suggests a possible avenue to legislative and cultural change that might address the paralysis and frustration that so many Americans feel when considering the gun laws. Coburn argues that the reason why there has been such a change and the start of this movement, is because March For Our Lives ‘foregrounded the perspectives of students themselves’. It was this voice of authenticity that ensured that this movement both had the appeal and the emotional power to drive change amongst politicians. However, the real strength of the movement lies in the fact that the young leaders were capable of inspiring others to take part in their movement. This wasn’t solely restricted to school students. At the March For Our Life event in Washington, there was, according to Coburn, significant numbers of older protestors, as well as many first time marchers, many of whom brought their own issues and linked the problems of gun violence to issues of racism and gender and sexual violence. Coburn’s comments about race are particularly interesting. The organisers of March For Our Lives are quick to point out that they have drawn inspiration from the American Civil Rights Movement, especially the Freedom Riders of the 1960s. They held a similar tour, called ‘The Road to Change’ where they ‘met with family members, community leaders, and survivors of gun violence across the country’ (March for Our Lives 2020). However, this reference to the Civil Rights Movement has not been without some criticism. Mathiason (2019) acknowledges the ‘fierce activism’ (p. 94) shown by the March For Our Lives protestors, but he also states that there are some important differences. These differences are related to the ‘role of systemic racial inequality in both public and legislative response to mass shootings, policy brutality and entrenched social violence’ (p. 95). Mathiason goes on to argue that, while changing the rules around gun ownership may be important, it will not be enough to change the cultural assumptions around systematic violence. He writes:

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Like the ’60s, the 2010s are a time of great social change accompanied by a rise in identitarian politics, including American exceptionalism and white masculinity in crisis. As numerous studies have shown, more so than mental illness, religious views, or party affiliations, what most perpetrators have in common is that they are white men. (p. 92)

In order to prevent gun violence, Mathiason argues, there is a need to address this form of violent racism. Mathiason then goes on to compare March For Our Lives with other movements that are explicitly race-based, such as #BlackLivesMatter and the #MillionHoodies March. He argues that the voices we would be listening to are the leaders of these movements, whose voices are not being heard as clearly as their peers from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High. There have been reasons advanced for why this might be the case—such as the lack of a clear policy agenda—but Mathiason dismisses these, instead arguing that the reason why the students from March For Our Lives are receiving more media attention is because they are an acceptable face for change—and their lives—those of white children from affluent, suburban Florida—are more valuable than those of black children. Another criticism has come from the media, suggesting that the students who took on leadership roles within the March For Our Lives movement were actors. Senior (2018) identified various examples, across social media, of the young people being accused of being in the pay of various political lobby groups, or being controlled by the FBI. This is an interesting point, and worth exploring: much of the early success of the March For Our Lives movement was based on the rapid growth that social media made possible. While there was a great deal of legacy media coverage, in the form of print and television stories, there was far more coverage online, from students and other interested parties. The rapid scaleability and reach provided by tools like Twitter meant that, as the students organised March For Our Lives, supporters—from across the world—were more than willing to amplify that message, turning a state issue into a truly global one. It also meant that significant influencers in the online world were aware of the campaign, and could indicate their support, which further increased the reach and impact of March For Our Lives. In a very short period of time, celebrities like George and Amal Clooney, Kim Kardashian West, Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga and Paul McCartney (amongst a great many others) had all indicated their support. However, such a social media strategy is not without its perils, and, almost immediately, there were conspiracy theories present about the students involved. After all, as Morozov (2011) predicted, the internet and social media are not only the domain of progressive forces, and there are significant and powerful corporations who are not well disposed to stricter gun laws. Social media sites like Twitter have only very limited filters on the content that is posted on their site, and despite recent efforts, there appears to be little that they can do to challenge incorrect or misleading information—whether it is deliberately posted or not. This means that even ridiculous accusations can, and do, become well circulated and supportive. The old adage about a lie travelling faster than the truth is exponentially true when social media is involved. Adele Senior (2018) explored the way that lies spread quickly about the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Drawing on the scholarship around ‘anti-theatrical

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prejudice’, which presumes that ‘the art of acting and deceiving go hand in hand’, Senior recognised that labelling the students as crisis actors was directly related to both their school experiences (many of the students were studying some form of drama) and this influenced the way they spoke and presented themselves, and also informed their actions as they drew on a history of theatre and art as a vehicle for social change. It was this confidence that was leapt upon by some critics, who suggested that these young people were far too well rehearsed or prepared to actually be real students of the school, and hence they must be part of some kind of conspiracy. This is part of a wider argument that is often made when young people are involved in social movement activism; indeed, it is possible to draw striking parallels between the Marjory Stoneman Douglas student and young climate change activists like Greta Thunberg, who is often accused of being a puppet for more sinister groups. Senior (2018) attributes this to the common notion that children should be ‘moulded and shaped according to an adult agenda’, which I think is astute, but I would go further and argue that this an expression of ‘citizens in waiting’; that is, according to some approaches to civics and citizenship education, young people are expected to be quiet and passive. They are meant to, as Shermis and Barth (1982) have argued, store up knowledge in case they need to use it later, but not to actually do anything with that knowledge until they are older. Of course, March For Our Lives (and indeed, the Climate Strikes and many of the other examples discussed in this book) gained it’s power purely because of the inaction of adults. As Senior writes, ‘what is most striking is that their presence on the world stage is a stark reminder that this is in fact a moment of crisis – and it is children who are taking action’ (Senior 2018).

4 Extinction Rebellion, 350.Org and Climate Activism I began this chapter with a brief account of my experiences as part of the School Strike 4 Climate in 2019. This is by no means the only environmental activism that is taking place around the world. The increasingly concerning forecasting and predictions by organisations such as the Intergovernmentary Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which recently announced that humanity has only 12 years to take radical action to halt or limit the effects of climate change, have engendered concern amongst many groups and communities. The solutions being proposed are related to moving from economies that are high in emissions of carbon to ones that are net zero. While there is a range of technological possibilities (not least the increase of renewable energy resources), the biggest challenges facing such a significant transition are those from the political sphere. In a similar way to the power of the NRA in the gun control debates in the US, there are deeply embedded links between the fossil fuel industry and governments in a number of different countries (including Australia), as well as effective climate change denials and disinformation campaigns. These problems are compounded by the typical short-term approach of governments and financial markets.

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For the most part, this has meant that governments have struggled to address the problems brought about by climate change. According to Neil Gunningham (2019), the mechanism to enforce such change from governments can only come from intense pressure being placed on governments in order for them to act. This should come from grassroots movements, working in tandem with other non-state actors. Gunningham contrasts two different climate movements to indicate the different approaches that they have undertaken and where they have succeeded—or not. 350.org is the older of the two. Originally founded in 2008 in the US by author Bill McKibben, 350.org seeks to build ‘a future that’s prosperous, equitable and safe from the effects of the climate crisis’ (https://350.org/about/). It is named after the safe concentration level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere: 350 parts per million. Since that time, they have engaged in 10 years of activism, including one of the first days of climate action in 2009, training of young activists, protesting at sites of coal plants and gas pipelines (especially the Keystone XL pipeline in North America) and encouraging large organisations to divest themselves from any relationship with the fossil fuel industry. There are now 350.org local groups and regional hubs active across every continent except Antarctica. According to Gunningham, 350.org has a clear theory of change. This is based on the power of a grassroots movement that is large enough and vocal enough to compel the government (and other groups, like industry) to act. Digital and social media and communication tools are central to building this grassroots movement through local voluntary groups, that focus on local issues. Thus, 350.org takes a decentralised approach in order to allow local groups to address areas of concern in their local area. For example, groups in Australia might be campaigning against the opening of new coal mines, while groups in North America are protesting coal seam gas (‘fracking’) mining. Any central coordination, according to Gunningham, is limited to developing scripts and tactics that can be readily replicated and applied to various situations. This has allowed the movement to grow quickly and effectively campaign. Gunningham writes, The movement has exploited political opportunities, engaged in innovative forms of protest and used cognitive framing and symbolic politics to gain media interest and persuade the public of the importance and legitimacy of its claims. (2019, p. 4)

Despite this, Gunningham is not confident of the ongoing success of 350.org. He suggests that internal tensions might be limiting its growth, and there is also the challenge of expanding beyond university campuses into the wider community. In contrast, Gunningham describes Extinction Rebellion (XR), a new actor within the environmental protest movement. While there are similarities in their goals, XR has a very different means of achieving its goals. Despite only being launched in 2018, there are now more than 130 XR groups across the UK, and there is a presence of XR in another 44 countries. Gunningham estimates that there are more than 650 groups globally. XR is critical of the history of environmental activism, suggesting that 30 years of activism has achieved little—certainly not enough. When faced with that, the only option is civil disobedience. When XR launched in 2018, this took the form of blocking bridges in London, protestors glueing themselves to thoroughfares to

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prevent traffic access, attaching themselves to trains and buildings and even planting trees (or at least attempting to) in Parliament Square. The argument made by XR protestors is that this is the moral choice. XR is committed to non-violence, but they draw on the long history of successful civil disobedience campaigns in order to successfully prosecute their aims. However, while there are differences in the tactics employed, there are some similarities (beyond their goals of arresting climate change) between 350.org and XR. One of these is the relationship that the organisation has with participants. For example: its reasons for departing radically from the tactics of its predecessors are evidence based, while its preference for devolved decision-making involving groups connected in a complex web, and building a movement that is participatory, decentralised and inclusive are also grounded in experience. (Gunningham 2019, p. 5)

Both 350.org and XR have sought to decentralise the organisation of the movement away from a head office or a traditional organisational structure. Other scholars, including Brafman and Beckstrom (2006), Castells (2015) and Shirky (2008) have made the point that these leaderless organisations are often very effective in challenging more powerful actors. Individually, each of these regional groups, hubs or chapters (the nomenclature varies from organisation and location), might have only limited capacity to exert any kind of influence over decision-makers. However, even weak strands in webs of influence, such as grassroots activist movements, often become strong by being tied to other weak strands, and they may become even more influential when tied to stronger strands. (Gunningham 2019, p. 195)

This building of broader networks of alliances is central to the impetus that many of the environmental movements now have, and it has led to some unlikely partners. For example, the union movement in Australia and the UK is generally supportive, for the most part, of climate change activism because of the arguments for a ‘just transition’—a movement towards a more sustainable environmental approach, but one that caters for those who work in industries that are likely to be affected by any movement.

5 Hong Kong and the Umbrella Movement Another social movement that rose to prominence in this decade was the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong. The connections between the Umbrella movement and #Occupy are clear; in fact, their repertoire of protest (Tilly 2008) is, in many ways, similar. According to Lee (2014), the Umbrella Movement was the idea of Benny Tai, a law professor, who had concerns about both the Hong Kong government’s democratic integrity and the value of previous protest movements. His idea was that protesters should instead occupy the financial centre of the city, and paralyse the economy through that action. Tai’s ideas were popular, and after planning and

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debate, Occupy Central began on 28 September 2014. It quickly grew in scale and size. According to Lee and Chan (2015), during the 79 days of the occupation, 20% of Hong King’s adult population claimed to have gone to the occupied area. In a startling similarity to the uprisings in Egypt, it was the government’s actions that actually led to the sudden increase in popularity for the movement. Police deployed tear gas in an effort to break up the crowds who had gathered, but that action only sought to trigger more people to come out in support—and in fact, gave the Umbrella Movement its name, as students used only umbrellas and wet towels to protect themselves from the police’s pepper spray and tear gas. This similarity is a point made by Lee et al. (2015), who suggest that the Umbrella Movement shared many characteristics of social movements in recent years, including US, Egypt, Spain, Turkey, Mexico, Guatemala and Chile. These movements, they write, are different from the norms and rituals of conventional social movements, and are more closely related to notions of autonomous individuality than to collectivity. Lee et al. (2015) explain it like this: Personal action frames displace collective action frames in many protest causes and individuals. Collective actions are mobilized around personal lifestyle values, including causes such as economic justice, environmental protection, and workers and human rights. These causes are more difficult to address by politicians and mainstream media that belong to the previous era. Accompanying personalized politics is a strong mistrust of politicians and mass media because they seem to be irrelevant to young people (Bennett 2012). Consequently, alternative personalized media, particularly mobile phones, Internet websites, and social media, constitutes a new platform for alternative views and collective actions. (p. 357)

Central to this is the role that social media networks play in the formation of this identity. The affordances provided by social media meant that it was now possible to create social movements that were almost entirely leaderless; that is, every participant was equal. Lee et al. (2015) go on to describe the various ways that young people involved in the Umbrella Movement used social media and networks to indicate their support. According to their research, young people involved in the protests in Hong Kong are part of a generation that adopted networked media into their lives at a faster rate than any previous generation. This broke down the traditional domination of the mainstream media, as this generation is now more likely to seek their news from the internet than from a TV or a newspaper, and they are also more likely to make use of various forms of social media to communicate and organise. In Hong Kong, social media increasingly blurred the line between online and offline activism. While many supporters showed their support by changing profile pictures or adding banners to their Facebook profiles, others used Facebook and other social sites to organise protest activities, or to challenge their government. Others used it to share different tactics, or to livestream ongoing protests. I discuss the affordances of social media and mobile technology in Chapter 4; for the purpose of this chapter, it is enough to say that the protests in Hong Kong were both influenced by, and influenced other protest movements around the world, and that, they used social media and digital technology to effectively organise and campaign for social change.

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6 New Forms of Protest, New Forms of Learning Emergent learning is a feature of complex systems. There are a number of different definitions related to emergence, or emergent learning, within the framework of complexity theory and complexity pedagogy, although there are generally common concepts amongst the different definitions. Keith Morrison (2006) describes emergent learning as the process of ‘continual creativity’. Here, he is emphasising the fact that it is an ongoing process—like complex systems as a whole, emergent learning is constantly changing and adapting, growing more complex, as time progresses. More prosaically, Beckett and Hager (2019) describe emergent learning as the development of new structures or properties which are not wholly predictable from the original relations of the system. To them, this is one of the key differences between simple systems and complex systems. In a simple system, the end result is always predictable. In complex systems, the interaction between the agents in the system and the relationships that exist between those agents ensures that emergence takes place; that is, there are results that are unpredictable and unexpected. In each of the examples described above, there are examples of emergence taking place; that is, there are new structures and properties that are developing due to the interaction of the different relationships within the system. This is the crucial point; it is not the actors that necessarily are contributing to the development of emergent learning, but rather the totality of all the actors being greater than the sum of their parts which leads to the unexpected learning and developments. For example, in the case of March For Our Lives, some of the actors were young people, social media and mobile technology, and a cause about which those young people were deeply passionate (i.e. Gun control). One might also add in the entrenched resistance to change present amongst many of the legislatures within the US, and also the prevalence of digital and social media amongst the American populace. Individually, none of these might have been enough to generate any legislative change. Certainly, there had been numerous previous examples which had not achieved any tightening of the laws relating to the sale of firearms in Florida or around the US. However, the interaction of the young people, social media and a cause or social movement was such that an entirely unexpected result developed: a national platform of mobilised and politically active young people, as well as forcing the state of Florida to change gun ownership laws. In the case of the Umbrella movement, it was the interaction between the government and the protestors (and the use of social media) that led to emergent learning. In a similar fashion to the Tahrir Square uprising described by Tufekci (2017), the government of Hong Kong might have expected that deploying the police to break up the protestors might have led to the pacification of the protest movement, at least at that time and place. Certainly such actions had led to that result in the past. However, in both Egypt and Hong Kong, this action actually solidified and strengthened the protest movement and led to more people taking part in the protests—an outcome that was entirely unexpected.

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Another point about emergent learning that is worth mentioning is that it’s worth noting that many of these social movements, regardless of political positions or local contexts, are learning from each other, so that there is a continually developing (or perhaps even ‘continuously creative’) repertoire of actions. Digital and social media plays a key role here. Tufekci writes about how there have been networks of protest cultures that have stayed in contact across time and space—she mentions the community of Arab Bloggers, and also the Zapatista movement and how it influenced other groups, both in the Americas and in the Middle East. Castells, too, notes this point, describing the way that the original Hong Kong uprising inspired Los Indignados in Spain, who in turn inspired #Occupy in the US and around the world— which in turn re-inspired the most recent uprisings in Hong Kong. In this respect, one of the affordances of digital and social media is that it provides ways to share information seamlessly, and, at this point, nearly autonomously. This almost frictionless (and I acknowledge that there is a role played by the technology and telecommunication companies in this sharing of information, and also governments who are increasingly monitoring the way such technologies are used) sharing of information means that there are significant new numbers of relationships between and through social movements—which adds to the complexity and the likelihood of emergent learning occurring. In the Introduction, I discussed the criticism often made of young people that they are ignorant and apathetic about democracy and their role as citizens. This might now seem incongruous, having discussed a number of protests in which young people have either led or been featured very prominently. How can this apparent contradiction be explained? In the next chapter, I outline how different paradigms of active citizenship have led to this dual nature of young people’s participation in civil society.

Research Portrait One: Opening Credits I don’t know why you bother. I mean, what’s the point? I can make more money here in Redfern than I can going to school or getting a job. Shit, I bet I make more money here than you do.

This challenge from a cocky, 14-year-old named Blake, as he rested on the handlebars of his bicycle, was my first confrontation with the social conflicts present in education. It would not be my last. Like many teachers I’ve known, teaching wasn’t my original choice. I’d already had a short-lived career in the armed forces, and an even shorter one in the health industry. When I first broached it one Christmas, my parents’ had mixed reactions; they were disappointed, having expected me to do something they thought worthwhile such as law, medicine or engineering, but they were at least pleased I would be doing more than ‘just an arts degree’. My previous experience with educating children had been limited to a few camps and in-school programs, and I hadn’t felt any kind of vocation to become a teacher. I had always been accomplished at English and the Humanities at school, so now I

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could capitalise on that with a new career, teaching. It was a peculiarity of the teacher training program at the time that trainees didn’t actually spend time in schools until their fourth and final year; they had to have almost completed their training before finding out whether they were actually any good in the classroom. Aware of this, and wanting to gain some experience before that happened, I volunteered to work at The Learning Centre in Redfern Police and Communities Youth Club, answering an advertisement in the university newspaper. Redfern is an inner-city suburb of Sydney. Once an area of working-class cottages, over recent years it has undergone a form of gentrification, with high-rise apartments being constructed and technology parks established to meet the needs of the new generation of workers and residents. Less prosperous residents are moving to the outer suburbs. Like much of Sydney, Redfern is multicultural, its school students coming from more than a hundred nationalities. It is also home to ‘The Block’, the centre of Indigenous culture in Sydney, and once a regular location for confrontations between police and indigenous residents. At that time, Redfern was also a centre of the drug trade in Sydney, as well as having a reputation for violent crime. Youth unemployment was high and education levels were low. The Learning Centre was funded partly through corporate donations and fundraising. Its aim was to provide the youth in the area with alternatives to becoming involved in crime by improving their chances at completing high school. The centre ran a homework club every weekday afternoon between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m., as well on Saturday mornings. Originally conceived as a chance for students to get assistance with their homework, during the time I worked there it gradually metamorphosed into a life skills program and drop-in centre. In addition to the homework club, there were arts and crafts classes, Hip Hop lessons, capoeira classes, cooking lessons, basketball and much more. It was a rather inauspicious place to begin my teaching career; the first time I went there, I was amongst a group of five new volunteers. I remember walking into the main centre and being vaguely horrified by the ancient desktop computers in the room. I also remember the threatening silence that greeted us: about 15 kids turned from what they were doing—eating, talking, pretending to do homework—and gave us a beady-eyed stare. When I sat next to a group of students, they packed up what they were doing and moved away from me. The message was clear: I was going to have to show the kids my commitment to them before they would be bothered engaging with me. Of the volunteers in my group, I was the only one still returning after the first month. I quickly divided the students I came to know into two groups I called the Regulars and the Drop-Ins. The Regulars were mostly between 11 and 13, either in the last years of primary school or the first years of high school. They would be fairly regular attendees at schools in the area who on occasion would bring school work to the Learning Centre, but more often they would simply show up in the absence of anything else to do. The Centre became a de facto home for them, providing the social interaction they seemed to be lacking at home. Amongst the students were Diana, Raylee, and Taylah. Diana is the only child of an Albanian single mother who barely spoke English. Raylee, would spend more

References

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time looking after her five or six brothers and sisters than she ever did at school. I once drove Raylee, her mother and her youngest sister to Sydney Children’s Hospital late one evening after the youngest one had fallen and cut her head. They had shown up at the Learning Centre, unsure of what to do next. Taylah was the leader of this little group, and I came to realise that if I could connect with her I would have a way in with the rest of the group. As I became a regular at the Learning Centre, my relationship with Taylah developed haltingly. She saw me as a resource; she would present me with her homework and tell me ‘to get on with it’ while she did other things. I would refuse. ‘Well, why not’? Taylah would say. ‘Because it’s your homework – you have to do it if you are going to learn anything’. ‘That’s shit. No one cares whether I do it or not’. ‘That’s not true. Your teachers care about your homework’. ‘No, they don’t. They don’t care if I even show up at school’. I often encountered arguments like this from the Regulars during the years I worked in the Learning Centre. I came to understand how these kids felt abandoned— by their parents, schools, almost everybody. And then there were the Drop-Ins. These kids were a different level of challenge compared to the Regulars. I called them Drop-Ins because they were only sporadic attendees at the Learning Centre; they dropped in when there was something they wanted. The Cooking Program was our attempt to draw these kids into the Learning Centre, as were our regular Thursday night movies. Our success was limited. Blake was one of these Drop-in kids. I didn’t know how long since he had been to school, or even where he lived. He would wait in the car park of the PCYC, watching the Regular kids go in each afternoon. It became common for me to talk to him, trying to entice him into the Learning Centre. Sometimes, he would come in, but more often he would refuse. He would insist there was nothing on offer for him in the Learning Centre, or in education as a whole. Instead, he took money for delivering drugs around Redfern, knowing he had impunity where the police were concerned. Earlier that year, a young boy had been killed after being impaled on a fence while running from police. There was a huge community uproar, and since then the police avoided kids like Blake. I spent more than two years working with students at the Learning Centre before I left to work in the UK. The main thing that I remember was the social inequality, despite Australia having a high standard of school education. Nothing in my teacher education had prepared me for this and I had no tools in my repertoire to deal with the disaffection and disengagement of the kids at the Learning Centre. This has bothered me repeatedly over the years since then.

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References Akaev, A., Korotayev, A., Issaev, L., & Zinkina, J. (2017). Technological development and protest waves: Arab spring as a trigger of the global phase transition? Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 116, 316–321. Beckett, D., & Hager, P. (2019). The emergence of complexity: Rethinking education as a social science. New York: Springer. Bennett, W. L. (2012). The personalization of politics: Political identity, social media, and changing patterns of participation. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 644(1), 20–39. Brafman, O., & Beckstrom, R. A. (2006). The starfish and the spider: The unstoppable power of leaderless organizations. New York: Penguin. Castells, M. (2015). Networks of outrage and hope: Social movements in the Internet age. Chichester: Wiley. Cayla, D. (2019). The rise of populist movements in Europe: A response to European ordoliberalism? Journal of Economic Issues, 53(2), 355–363. Coburn, J. (2018, March 26). March for our lives was about far more than students and gun control. The Conversation. Gunningham, N. (2019). Averting climate catastrophe: Environmental activism, extinction rebellion and coalitions of influence. King’s Law Journal, 30(2), 194–202. Lee, W. O. (2014). Future-oriented citizenship: A possible citizenship model starting from the case of Singapore. Citizenship Teaching & Learning, 10(1), 95–108. Lee, F., & Chan, J. (2015). Digital media activities and mode of participation in a protest campaign: A study of the Umbrella Movement. Information, Communication & Society, 19(1), 4–22. Lee, P., So, C., & Leung, L. (2015). Social media and Umbrella Movement: Insurgent public sphere in formation. Chinese Journal of Communication, 8(4), 356–375. March for Our Lives. (2020). Mission & story. March for Our Lives. Mathiason, J. (2019). From the assassinations of the 1960s to Stoneman Douglas: Guns. Violence, and White Masculinity in Crisis Cultural Critique, 103(1), 91–99. Morozov, E. (2011). The net delusion: The dark side of Internet freedom. New York: PublicAffairs. Morrison, K. (2006, November 28–30). Complexity theory and education, ÂPERA Conference 2006. Hong Kong. Polanyi, K., & MacIver, R. M. (1944). The great transformation (Vol. 2). Boston: Beacon Press. Senior, A. (2018, March 2). Florida school shooting: Urgency of gun reform calls for dramatic action from young survivors. The Conversation. Shermis, S. S., & Barth, J. L. (1982). Teaching for passive citizenship: A critique of philosophical assumptions. Theory and Research in Social Education, X(4), 17–37. Shirky, C. (2008). Here comes everybody: The power of organizing without organizations. New York: Penguin. Tilly, C. (2008). Contentious performances. New York: Cambridge University Press. Tufekci, Z. (2017). Twitter and tear gas: The power and fragility of networked protest. New Haven: Yale University Press. Yaffe, J. (2018). From the editor—The kids are all right: Lessons from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High. Journal of Social Work Education, 54(2), 195–197.

Chapter 3

Apathetic or Activist? Young People, Citizenship and the Public Sphere

Abstract This chapter will present the alternative view about young people; that is, that young people have also often been described as apathetic or ignorant. They have also been rather unfairly homogenised. To do this, I will cite examples such as the Lowy poll, and explore these studies that show there has been a decline in faith in democracy and increased preference for more autocratic regimes. I will develop this idea and identify the growth of such regimes. This chapter will also engage in a discussion regarding whether this represents a lack of faith in democracy, or simply in the forms of representative democracy that are common and instead a preference for more direct participatory democracy. In addition, I will also discuss some of the examples of civic action taking place currently in Australia and around the world, with a specific focus on those that relate to young people. The purpose of this will be to draw out key commonalities in these experiences: for example, mobilisation that is broader than political parties, the existence of more single-issue approaches and the use of technology to organise diverse groups.

1 A Loss of Faith in Democracy? It seems that much of the democratic world is undergoing a period of self-doubt in terms of its relationship with democracy. It is now a regular occurrence for media outlets to report that citizens are losing faith in their democracy, in larger numbers than ever before. This apparent decline in democratic belief is a global phenomenon, affecting countries like the United States, South Africa, Sweden, the UK, New Zealand and Australia. It is also a decline that appears to be, in some way, related to the age of the people being surveyed: older generations appear to be more firmly wedded to the values of democracy than the younger generations—although, like so much else in this sphere, even that claim is contested. One survey that explores these ideas is the Lowy Institute Poll, which is conducted annually in Australia. Since 2012, the poll has charted a decline in Australians’ view of democracy when compared to other forms of government. Overall, the poll indicates that most people in Australia (between 59 and 65%) believe that democracy is preferable to any other © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Heggart, Activist Citizenship Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4694-9_3

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form of government. Another 20–25% suggest that, in some cases, non-democratic government might be preferable, and the remainder (approximately 15–20%) either don’t know or feel that the form of government doesn’t matter to someone like them (Roggeveen 2017). At first glance, such statistics might even suggest that democracy is reasonably healthy; after all, surely a modern democracy needs to be diverse enough to recognise that some citizens might not agree with democracy as a form of government. However, it is when the Lowy figures are examined by the age of respondents that a concerning trend appears to be developing. In 2017, only 52% of young Australians (aged 18– 29) agreed that democracy is the most preferable form of government—which is a significant gap when compared to the percentage of older Australians who agreed that democracy is preferable. But there is perhaps something cyclical taking place here: in 2019, the most recent version of the Lowy poll indicated that there had been some kind of stabilisation of these figures: The gap between older and younger Australians on the importance of democracy – which has been striking in previous Lowy Institute Polls – appears to be narrowing. A majority of Australians aged 18–29 years (55%) in 2019 express a preference for democracy, compared with 68% of Australians aged over 30. In previous years this gap has been as large as 28 points. However, there is still a significant proportion (30%) of 18–29 year olds who say that ‘in some circumstances, a non-democratic government can be preferable’. (The Diplomacy and Public Opinion Program 2019)

The concerns regarding people’s, and especially young people’s attitudes towards democracy are not limited only to Australia, either. Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk (2016) have examined the generational differences of opinion about the value of democracy across a range of different countries. They found evidence of a significant decline in countries like the US, New Zealand, Britain and Netherlands. For example, in the US, 72% of Americans born in the 1930s think that it is essential to live in a democracy. For the millennial generation (born since the 1980s), only 30% agree with that statement. In New Zealand, approximately 70% of those born in the 1930s think it is essential to live in a democracy, but only just over 25% of millennial New Zealanders agree with that. There are similar statistics from other countries that were studied. According to Foa and Mounk (2016), younger people are also more open to authoritarian rule. This is a particularly contentious issue in Mounk and Foa’s research. While it was a commonly held belief that wealthy and well-established democracies, such as Australia and the US, would not return to authoritarian forms of government without some kind of catastrophic catalyst, Foa and Mounk claimed to have identified evidence suggesting that, as democracy was falling out of favour amongst young people, they were growing more interested in authoritarianism. Their data shows that, in the US for example, the percentage of young people (aged 16–24) who considered democracy to be a ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’ way of running the country increased from 16% in 1995 to almost 25% in 2011. There was a similar trend in Europe (almost 8% in 1995–1997 to almost 15% in 2010–2012). While older Americans were against a military takeover (43% rejected this idea), only 19% of young Americans disagreed with this notion. Again, the trends were quite similar in Europe.

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There is more, too. As well as being more comfortable with autocratic government, young people in the US are less supportive of civil rights. Only 33% felt that they were ‘absolutely essential’ compared with 41% of older Americans who were supportive. And, unlike in Australia where voting is compulsory, in the US, where voting is optional, more than a quarter of young people did not consider choosing leaders through free elections was important. Perhaps the most concerning statistic is that young people appear to be losing interest in politics. Comparing the same aged cohorts (16–35) in 1990 and 2010, it appears that both Europe and the US are suffering something of a slump in political interest: while in 1990, 53% of Americans aged 16–35 indicated an interest in politics, this number had fallen to 41% in 2010. The respective figures are 48 and 38% in Europe. It is important to note that these arguments are not just about youth disengagement. Foa and Mounk do compare younger generations with older generations, but they also compare younger generations with previous data from younger generations, and this appears to illustrate a decline when comparing similar groupings. Foa and Mounk (2016) argue that there is a great cause for concern. They write: Today, we have even greater confidence in the durability of the world’s affluent, consolidated democracies. But do we have good grounds for our democratic self-confidence? At first sight, there would seem to be some reason for concern. Over the last three decades, trust in political institutions such as parliaments or the courts has precipitously declined across the established democracies of North America and Western Europe. So has voter turnout. As party identification has weakened and party membership has declined, citizens have become less willing to stick with establishment parties. Instead, voters increasingly endorse singleissue movements, vote for populist candidates, or support “antisystem” parties that define themselves in opposition to the status quo. Even in some of the richest and most politically stable regions of the world, it seems as though democracy is in a state of serious disrepair. (p. 7)

2 A Negligible Decline? While these statistics and apparent trends are alarming, it is not true to say that there has been widespread agreement, either with the methodology adopted by Foa and Mounk, or with the conclusions that they have drawn from their research. Indeed, the Journal of Democracy, where Foa and Mounk published their research, also published three critiques of Foa and Mounk’s work (Alexander and Welzel 2017; Norris 2017; Voeten 2017). These critiques are detailed and worth examining in their entirety, but, in short, they suggest that Foa and Mounk have not represented the current state of democratic and civic engagement with the fidelity it deserves, and hence their conclusions may be somewhat erroneous. Amy C. Alexander and Christian Welzel begin by placing Foa and Mounk’s argument within a historical context that is not present in their own work, referencing the protests by young people that are sweeping the globe. Certainly, when compared with the current events taking place around the globe, such as the School Strike for Climate and the March for Our Lives, it is difficult to argue that some young people are less interested in civic action and democracy than previous generations.

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Erik Voeten (2017) is skeptical about the data presented by Foa and Mounk. He suggests that the data gathered from one survey is not, by itself, sufficient to suggest any particular trend. In fact, he suggests that there is competing evidence that, at least in the US, it is the older generations who have lost faith in the mechanisms and institutions of government more than the younger ones. Regardless, Voeten rejects Foa and Mounk’s argument of a sudden generational decline in democratic belief. He writes: The data do not reveal such a pattern. In each country, democracy is most popular by some distance and has remained so over the past two decades. In most countries, positive assessments of democracy top 90 percent. Expert rule is next. Army rule has almost no support. There is little systematic movement over time. In some countries support for democracy has grown a bit. In others, it seems to have declined slightly. The United States is an example of a country where support for democracy has gone down while alternatives have become more acceptable. But there is no clear overall trend that jumps out for any indicator. (2017, p. 3)

My inclusion of this discussion in this book is not to point out, with any certainty, a definitive answer to young people’s engagement with democracy, in either a global or national sense. Rather, it is to argue that such an answer is not one that is readily apparent, and an analysis is not well-served by the presumption that young people are a homogenous group with similar aims and themes. Rather, they are intensely variegated in their interests, motivations and capacities for engagement, and there are also significant and important differences in the way that they choose to engage with their democracies. Equally, and it is a point that Alexander and Welzel make, our notions of what democracy is—and therefore how we engage with it—have changed over the period that Foa and Mounk cite, which means that how we measure how we value that democracy has changed too.

3 Engaged or Disengaged? If the above discussion demonstrates anything, it is that our understanding of democracy, and particularly the way young people learn about, and learn to engage with, that democracy, is limited. The nature of their engagement, too, is changing, and many of the tools that we might once have used for measuring civic participation (membership of community or political groups, parties and unions, attendance at protests or marches, voter turnout, for example) might no longer be as useful as they once were. This is not to say that they are not important or valuable measures, but simply they are not, perhaps, the only way that young people might be engaging with democracy, and thus cannot be considered as a totality of young people’s experience in and of themselves. Adding another level of complexity to this contested space is the role that social media and mobile and digital technologies play within society, and especially within the lives of young people. Fortunately, in recent years there has been much examination of young people’s lives online and especially how it might shape their engagement in civic life.

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W. Lance Bennett (2008) has argued that our engagement with society and civic life is changing because of the influence of social media. He argues (in a similar but less catastrophic fashion than Foa and Mounk) that many established democracies are showing signs of wear, and that politics, and indeed, politicians, have become dirty words. In particular he cites trends in youth dissatisfaction across countries like US, Germany and Sweden. The causes for this dissatisfaction are many: older generations are negative and dismissive, both of politicians and young people, the press is cynical, politicians are full of vitriol and campaigns are negative. In addition, there is little said or announced by these politicians that might be of interest to young people. In addition, Bennett (2008) recognises that young people are increasingly occupying a new civic space—that of the online world, the world of online friendship networks, gaming and entertainment environments. While he was writing this in 2008, there is little to suggest that there has been any decline in these environments; conversely, they appear to have grown exponentially. However, Bennett points out that there are signs of youth engagement—although perhaps not what some academics might call democratic engagement—in these civic spaces, such as consumer activism, social causes, community volunteer work and efforts to combat economic injustice. A recent example of such a case might be the campaign to save Brooklyn99, a popular TV comedy, after the producers announced it was going to be cancelled. A concerted and well supported social media campaign ensured that the show was given another season. Some might argue that this is not a case of civic activism, but, despite the difference between the digital real and the physical real, I fail to see how this might be different to saving a heritage building or a local community centre. Nor am I alone in this; Bennett acknowledges that some academics agree that online activity can be a form of civic activism: For example, Henry Jenkins, Cathy Davidson, Mimi Ito and Jochai Benkler argue that many forms of shared activity online (from blogging, to conflict and protest behaviour in gaming, fan and entertainment sites) represent forms of civic or media engagement. (2008, p. 2)

Bennett makes a number of crucial points. The first is that perhaps it is not young people who are the reason for their disengagement from traditional forms of politics (and I will discuss that further below), but rather the failure of government institutions to speak to them in the ways that they are interested in. The second is that democracy may very well be undergoing what he calls a ‘creative period of realignment’ (p. 1) delivered, at least in part, by the affordances of new social media technologies. These affordances allow more of the personal to enter into the civic sphere, and this ‘restores the sense that participation makes a difference’ (p. 1). He writes, The challenges of influencing the course of nations and addressing global issues may inspire creative solutions from the generations of young citizens who have access to digital communication tools. The cascading advance of media platforms and social software enables unprecedented levels of production and distribution of ideas, public deliberation and network organisation. (2008, p. 1)

As evidence of this, Bennett proposes that young people are subjected to different paradigms regarding what counts as civic engagement. While these two paradigms

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acknowledge little or no common ground between them in terms of what constitutes this engagement and democratic participation, it is likely that these two paradigms will persist, leading to the conflicting narratives about young people’s engagement such as those presented above. Bennett called these paradigms the ‘Engaged Youth’ and ‘Disengaged Youth’ paradigms. In a similar way to Alexander and Welzel (2017), Bennett suggests that the engaged youth paradigm emphasises the generational change in social identity. This change has meant that young people now interact with the world, each other and older generations in different ways. These ways emphasise the growing importance of peer networks and online communities. These networks are increasingly popular, Bennett argues, because they now are de facto substitutes for public institutions and discourses, which have declined in credibility and authenticity. Rather than blame young people for this, Bennett points out that the fault here lies with the government and media, and not with the citizens who are struggling to engage. I would—and do—extend that point further, and suggest that perhaps some blame lies within our school systems, too. This paradigm recognises that youth are capable of self-expression; indeed, the empowerment of youth and their right to make their own creative choices is central to much of the research in this space. As part of this empowerment, this paradigm is interested in the ways that young people might express themselves and take civic actions in the online space. Bennett, rather anachronistically, suggests that MySpace might well be a site for such civic action; despite the failure of MySpace as other social media sites like Facebook took over, Bennett’s argument is valid. This means that researchers within this paradigm have less interest in traditional measures of engagement with conventional political participation. In short, while voter turnouts might be decreasing, researchers who are studying engaged youth might argue that young people are civically and democratically active in other ways. Alternatively, the disengaged youth paradigm is interested in precisely those generational declines that Foa and Mounk are seeking to describe. While Bennett acknowledges that researchers in this paradigm might recognise the role that social media plays in identity and self-expression, there is more attention paid to civic institutions and the public’s engagement with those. These, researchers might argue, are the best measures of the health of a democracy, and there might be some sympathy for the thrust of Foa and Mounk’s argument, if not their use of data. Researchers like David Buckingham have argued that there is a difference between media engagement and civic engagement, and I think that there is a risk that researchers from the engaged youth camp might end up mistaking one for the other. Buckingham (2010) suggests that civic engagement implies some sense of operating within the public sphere. More recently, there has been significant work undertaken involving young people and their engagement in social movements mediated by personal digital technology. Principal amongst the scholars working in this field is Ariadne Vromen, who has undertaken a detailed analysis of GetUp!, a progressive social advocacy organisation centred in Australia. Building on the work of Michael Micheletti (2015), who

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suggested categorising young people’s participation in social movements into collective and individual participation, Vromen points out that our understanding of what constitutes a civic or public sphere has changed considerably. She argues that micropolitics can lead to micro-engagements and micro-mobilisations, in many different facets of citizens life: New areas of debate link politics with the everyday lives of citizens through the micro-politics of institutional engagement within shared spaces of the workplace and service delivery; and through social movements’ focus on micro-mobilisations and collective identity formation. (Vromen 2016, p. 226)

However, and this is an important point for our discussions about Justice Citizens, Vromen argues that the technology is not enough to explain the success of social movements like GetUp! Nor are the new tactics employed by organisations using these new technologies. Instead, Vromen argues that it is the intentional use of storytelling and narrative that contributes to increased engagement, participation and social change (Karpf 2016). This use of narrative, and its attendant reliance on affect amongst recipients, became a central feature in Justice Citizens.

4 The (New) Public Sphere? Habermas’ notion of the public sphere is important in any discussion about what might be considered civic engagement and what might not be. However, the notion of the civic sphere is problematic when it comes to describing the interactions that take place on the internet. Zizi Papacharissi (2010) suggests that the notion of the public sphere is perhaps not the best metaphor to describe the interactions taking place on the internet and in social media because the internet has a tendency to create small groupings that often serve only to buttress the dominant opinions within that group—there is limited or no norm referencing to wider society in many of these groups—something that Clay Shirky (2010) describes when exploring the culture of various subreddits. This is at odds with the traditional Habermasian view of the public sphere, which was intended to ‘facilitate rational discourse of public affairs directed toward the common good’ (Papacharissi 2010, p. 3). Of course, Paracharissi is quick to point out that the public sphere itself never amounted to that ideal, instead becoming ‘plagued by forces of commercialisation and compromised by corporate conglomerates’ (2008, p. 247). Paparcharissi goes on to explain that this modern form of the public sphere is a vehicle to support capitalist interests, and a mechanism for driving public relations and advertising material, rather than the location of any civilised discourse. The internet, when contrasted with this example of mainstream or legacy media, is often presented as an alternative to the corporate control of the media and hence a new possibility for the development of the public sphere (as originally envisioned) and a chance to increase public and civic engagement. Young people are seen as

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being in the vanguard of any such movement, as they are often amongst the earliest adopters of new forms of technology supported by the internet (such as Twitter and Facebook). Papacharissi writes Naturally, a digital medium like the internet, with an infrastructure that promises unlimited and unregulated discourse that operates beyond geographic boundaries, would suggest a virtual reincarnation of the public sphere. (2008, p. 250)

It is this possibility that captured the interest of activists and policymakers alike. There is plenty of utopian rhetoric about the democratising potential of the internet, and the chance to reset or even do away with power relations entirely. Howard Rheingold (1993) was very clear in what he saw as the link between computermediated technology (CMC) and the opportunity for more widespread civic activism and democratic participation: The political significance of CMC lies in its capacity to challenge the existing political hierarchy’s monopoly on powerful communications media, and perhaps thus revitalize citizenbased democracy. The way image-rich, sound-bite-based commercial media have co-opted political discourse among citizens is part of a political problem that communications technologies have posed for democracy for decades. The way the number of owners or telecommunication channels is narrowing to a tiny elite, while the reach and power of the media they own expand, is a converging threat to citizens. Which scenario seems more conducive to democracy, which to totalitarian rule: a world in which a few people control communications technology that can be used to manipulate the beliefs of billions, or a world in which every citizen can broadcast to every other citizen? (Rheingold 1993, p. xxix)

While Rheingold was writing very early in the Information Age, and his optimism is understandable, he was hardly alone then—and there are still cyber-utopianists today who make similar arguments. While I discuss this in more detail in the following chapter, Evgeny Morozov (2012) is quick to puncture such utopian dreams. He argues that the supposed link between democracy and technology is a historical one, extending back to the Cold War, at least. He also suggests that there is little evidence that the one begets the other; that is, simply by exposing authoritarian regimes to the benefits of VCRs, fax machines and Twitter is no guarantee that this will bring about the failure of these regimes and usher in a new era of democracy. Such an analysis is ahistorical and ignored the other factors that were present in different eras; as Tufekci (2017) notes, the technology might make such activities possible, but it is people who need to take the actions. Indeed, Morozov is quick to point out that authoritarian regimes are also ready and willing to use the affordances made possible by the internet to control and oppress their populations, as was the case in the Iranian uprising in 2009. Rather than seeing technology as the solution to young people’s civic engagement issues (should they exist, of course), Papacharissi suggests that we might be better placed to question whether we need to change our understanding and practice of democracy. Describing the illusory nature of democracy, in that it’s an ideal that is made real differently in each society, Papacharissi proposes that we should instead be asking, ‘What does democracy mean for citizens today’? The following question might ask, ‘And how do we, especially young people, practice it’? Fortunately,

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there are some answers. She writes that, instead of focusing (as most contemporary democracy does) on nostalgia for the past, the limitations of representative democracy, the growth of public cynicism and declining civic participation, we should instead consider the internet as a ‘new homestead for a community, an electronic frontier for democracy’ (2010, p. 13). In this example, Technology then presents a way to counter powerlessness by allowing individuals to propose new spaces, upon which newer, more empowering habits and relations may be cultivated. (2010, p. 15)

This is a directed approach to the use of technology to foster civic and democratic engagement. It is much more detailed than the utopian ideals of the technology-led democratic flourishing, although it shares similar aims. However, such an approach is not without its challenges. Papacharissi notes that the social media space and the internet is not strictly a public domain. While the original goal of the public sphere was to engender rational discussion, deliberations and agreement, the current public sphere has been compromised by the influence of private corporations and private interests, especially in the case of the media. The media is important in this discussion. Papacharissi proposes considering the notion of the public sphere less of a physical reality and more of a metaphor, as something that mediates between society and the state. This places great emphasis on the role of the media who ‘play a critical part in informing and directing public opinion’ (2008, p. 251). However, Habermas recognised that the commercialisation of the mass media would mean that the public sphere, such as it existed, would become perverted to serve the ends of those corporate interests, rather than being a place for reasoned (and reasonable) debate. This, Papacharissi argues (as well as some other factors such as the limits on debate and the limited coverage and negative tone of political discussion) has served to disengage the public from the public sphere. Alternatively, the internet has a number of differences to traditional mass media which influence the way that it might be used to either engage or disengage democracy. The first is access to information. The internet is often presented as a public space, although, of course, that is not entirely the case—it is still heavily vested with corporate interests. While many of these corporate sites do present the user with access to information, that access is neither universal, nor is there a casual link between more information and great civic engagement. In addition, in much the same way that the public sphere as originally envisioned by Habermas does, ‘online media simultaneously reproduce(s) class, gender and rance inequalities of the offline public sphere’ (Hill and Hughes 1998, p. 31). Hart, too, is cautious, warning against what may appear to be civic engagement, but is instead a ‘sense of activity, rather than genuine civic involvement’ (1994, p. 108). This is an interesting point, and echoes Buckingham’s questioning of civic versus media engagement, and I think Hart also is providing a context for the more recent arguments of ‘clicktivism’ and ‘slacktivism’, where the appearance of engagement might take precedence over actual engagement. I am not proposing that the only form of civic activism is one that has to take place in the real world, in a face to face environment, but I share some of Hart’s and Papacharissi’s caution about illusory

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engagement with civic notions and whether they can be called involvement, much less activism. The second difference that Papacharissi notes is the element of reciprocity that is present on the internet. It is straightforward for people in one country to speak to people on the other side of the world—and it can be done in such a way as to appear to be almost entirely anonymous. On the one hand, such anonymity could be a powerful tool for policymakers to gauge public opinion, but equally, simply having the tool does not mean that it will be used wisely—or at all. The internet, as we discussed earlier, appears to be more often used as an echo chamber than as a critical friend, and simply having an anonymous forum does not require any level of discretion or cultural understanding. Mitra (1997) points out that connecting citizens who share a common interest via the internet might only serve to reproduce and magnify cultural disparities; in this sense, the internet becomes a tool for division, rather than one that supports a democratic whole. The final point that Papacharissi makes is that the commercialisation of the internet is already well underway. Even in 2008, she was aware that the internet has ‘gradually transitioned into an online multi-shopping mall and less of a deliberative space, which influences the orientation of digital political discussion’ (2008, p. 255). She goes on to argue that, while the internet remains susceptible to the desire of companies to make a profit, it will not prioritise civic participation and democratic engagement. In a rather depressing note, she concludes by arguing that the internet cannot singlehandedly produce political culture when it does not exist in society at large. However, if, as Papacharissi recommends, we re-examine how we conceive of democracy and how we engage with the internet, we might be able to re-examine what is meant by the public sphere and how that works—or could be made to work— within democracy. Papacharissi argues that ‘newer appropriations of the internet suggest interesting trends that pull us farther away from the public sphere ideal to a direction that is meaningful, but not what we may have expected’ (2010, p. 12). There are a couple of key features to this new trend. The first is what Papacharissi calls civic narcissism. Personalisation is a popular feature of the internet—one need only look at the way people change and modify profile pictures on social media for evidence of that. Papacharissi suggests that this self-entered approach signifies a possible retreat from the public life of political discourse, and a move from existential to expressive values. She writes, Self-expression values are connected to the desire to control one’s environment, a stronger desire for autonomy, and the need to question authority. Self-expression values are not uncivil, and have frequently led to subversive of collective action movements on environmental protection, fair trade and gender equality. (2010, p. 13)

Traditional civics scholars might not recognise consider changing your facebook profile picture to show your support for marriage equality to be a sign of civic engagement but I think that is precisely the kind of case that supports Papacharissi’s argument. People are acting in the digital real, collectively, to indicate their support for legislative change, and with the hope of communicating to others their support for that change. In one sense, this isn’t a great deal different to pamphleting or attending

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a rally—the main thing that is different is the tool that’s being used (and the scale or reach of that tool, perhaps, if one has a lot of friends). However, and this is a crucial point, this action takes place on ‘private property’, so to speak; that is, Facebook can and has shut down social movements and protests that have used the site to promote messages with which Facebook does not agree. Another key feature is the notion of direct representation and subversion. Papacharissi notes, much like Rheingold, that there was hope that the internet would possibly restructure democracy away from models that are mostly representative by empowering users to take action in a more direct fashion. Again, this was and remains a popular idea. In Australia, for example, the Flux party has promised to link voters with the means to vote on every issue put before the parliament via the internet. Yet such ideas appear to have gained little traction in democracies around the world. Papacharissi suggests that the internet really only promotes direct democracy selectively, and in reality, citizens generally appear to prefer the web sites of major media outlets and non-partisan sites. Certainly, and this is a point that Bennett makes too, political party websites have appeared to have little success in connecting with people who are aloof to politics.

5 A Communication Problem? As discussed above, the different standpoints for young people’s civic engagement (engaged versus disengaged approaches) operate on what Bennett (2008) describes as a deeply normative concept. Central to this concept is the idea of what it means to be ‘good’ citizens, and how such a citizen should behave. This is discussed in more detail in Chapter 8, but it is important to note here as central to the argument is the decline in the participation of young people in civic affairs. While the whole notion of the public sphere is problematic, and possibly due for renewal, as discussed above, the nature of that decline is worth critiquing, too. Peter Levine (2007) has written extensively on this topic. He argues that the decline and deficit narrative is overlooking the creative developments that are taking place in civic and civicadjacent spaces, which may be constituting a new foundation for a new civic society. This, I think, is the end point for what Papacharissi (2008) is arguing for: a new version of public spheres or spheres, which are a combination of both public and private influences. Citizens are still capable of being active here, but it is More a model of hybrid influence - dynamics of the market are actively challenged and conglomerates are being forced to adopt a more flexible structure that can more easily adapt and serve an audience that has become more selective, elusive and whimsical. (Papacharissi 2010, p. 22)

In addition, Levine also suggests that the data presented citing such a decline overlooks the way that subpopulations within the group are constantly changing. So, if the narrative of a decline amongst youth participation is more complicated than it might at first glance seem, how might we understand what is happening?

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According to Bennett, this is not an issue about ‘fixing’ young people. Rather, there is a need to change the institutional and communication environments that are affecting young people. Speaking of the US (but I think his argument is certainly relevant in Australia, too), Bennett argues that current institutions do little to encourage participation by young people. If all that these institutions and governments do is encourage young people to take part in what are clearly bad organisations, then that is merely propaganda, and doomed to failure. The paradox is that, if these institutions are to be reformed and made more welcoming to all people but especially young people, then young people need to take part in reforming them. He writes, ‘we must not only prepare citizens for politics but also improve politics for citizens’ (2008, p. 4).

6 Non-linearity, Distributed Decision-Making and Interactivity While that is a noble goal, it ignores the fact that young people might be doing precisely that for themselves already. Of course, it is far too early to make any predictions about how our social, civil and political environments may or may not be reshaped due to the influence of social media and technology, but it is worth considering the new ways that young people are using social media to reorder society in ways that they prefer. One of the most powerful affordances of social media and mobile technology is that it significantly increases the scale at which young people can operate. Whereas before a young person’s circle of influence might have been circumscribed by his or her geographical area, it is now possible for young people to have a peer group that extends well beyond national boundaries. And, through the mechanisms of social media, such as liking, sharing and retweeting content, a person’s influence can extend far beyond his or her own circle of influence and reach. Such an increase in potential scale can bring with it its own form of power—as the producers of Brooklyn 99 found out when they tried to cancel the show. Linked to this increase of power are competing notions of interactivity. This is something that Bennett (2008) has described. Most researchers about young people and their use of social media will emphasise the importance of interactivity between civil organisations, for example, and the young people they are trying to organise. However, Bennett notes that many of these civil organisations have different views of interactivity to those of the young people whose interest they are trying to arouse. In the first case, the view of interactivity held by many civil organisations is one of a transactional nature: that is, young people might be able to vote in an online poll, or rate whether they liked a particular video, or perhaps even leave a comment. But that’s not the same interactivity that young people are seeking. This second view of interactivity is, Bennett says, more playful, where ownership is shared between the controllers of the site and the users, and is a process of being constantly negotiated. In sites where there is the second version of interactivity, there

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is more likely to be youth participation—and that includes in terms of civic and civil organisations. The second view of interactivity is in keeping with ideas of non-linearity and distributed decision-making. Social media sites are very much constructed on ideas of shared content creation, and interactivity is built into sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. It is for this reason that you people might gravitate towards these sites, and use them for the purposes of civic engagement, rather than sites that might have been deliberately constructed for that purpose, but lack the interactivity that young people desire. The problem, and indeed, a main source of contention for the different schools of thought about young people and civic engagement is what this means for civic and citizenship education. Indeed, the purpose of this book is to address precisely this issue. In our rapidly changing world, what might a civics and citizenship education look like that took into account these conflicting ideas of engaged and disengaged youth, the role of the internet, mobile technology and social media, and the loss of trust in our institutions and the globalised nature of the problems that we face? These questions are central to the case of civics and citizenship education, and the purpose of this book. As I discuss later, there is little argument that there is a need for effective civics and citizenship education in democratic countries around the world. There is widespread agreement from all sides of politics that, in a democracy, the citizens should be active and informed. In the UK, this has taken the form of the Citizenship subject, which is compulsory for all students. In Australia, one of the key goals of the Melbourne Declaration (2008) was the need to develop ‘active and informed citizens’ (p. 7)—although it should be noted that this was changed to ‘active and informed members of the community’ in the most recent version of the goals. However, the great disagreement occurs about what it means to be an ‘active and informed citizen’, to use the Australian terminology. Indeed, there are also discussions about who is allowed to be active and informed, and what form that action may take. In Chapter 4, we discuss in more detail some of the topics we have broached here; specifically, what is the role of social media and mobile technology in social movement organising.

Research Portrait Two: Theme Song Many schools in Australia are multicultural, especially in Western suburbs of Sydney. McCarthy College (now Penola College) in the suburb of Penrith is an exception, having mostly white students, many of whom can trace their heritage back to Irish settlers or First Fleet convicts. This means the school has limited cultural diversity. Penrith, though, is gradually changing from a semi-rural location to one that is more urban, with business developing and high-density housing under construction to meet the demands of the increasing population that includes Chinese, Filipino and Sub-Saharan African migrant families.

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Tadi and Panashe are first-generation immigrants from Zimbabwe whose parents have high expectations of them, wanting them to go to university to become engineers or project managers or something similar. As a teacher at McCarthy, I was troubled by their isolation from the rest of the student body. Perhaps because of this isolation they embraced Hip Hop clothing styles and language, trying to wear baseball caps instead of the school uniform, and listening to American rap music rather than the music chosen by their fellow students. When McCarthy College was given an opportunity to work with Dr. Akesha Horton in 2012, a Fulbright Scholar from the US, in an innovative Hip Hop for Social Justice program for disaffected students, I leapt at the chance. By this time, I had already started my doctoral work, and I was particularly interested in the intersection of citizenship, social justice and technology. This seemed like an ideal learning opportunity for both the students and myself. Dr. Horton and I worked with a group of 12 students, from years seven to ten, who were selected either by teacher nomination or self-nomination. These students were removed from normal classes for four sessions, each lasting two hours. During this time, they examined Hip Hop culture from around the world, blogging about their experiences and using translation software to identify some of the common themes in Hip Hop music from Ghana, France and Romania. They also brainstormed about important social justice issues in their local communities, before writing a Hip Hop song and recording it at a local studio that had donated the time and the services of a sound engineer. The Hip Hop program had limited success. Most students wrote their lyrics, performed their songs and mastered the recordings, but they played them once or twice to their friends and then seemed to forget the whole project. I saw no changes in their participation in social justice and the local community. This wasn’t true for Tadi and Panashe, however. For them, the Hip Hop for Social Justice program was an unqualified success. These young men were engaged in something they could relate to, and it seemed to pay dividends. At one point, late in the project, when it looked like we might not be able to go to the studio, the other students shrugged their shoulders, but Tadi and Panashe would meet me every morning in the schoolyard, ask for updates and suggest other studios we could contact. Ultimately, they wrote a two-minute rap song called ‘Six Hours of Pain’ that highlighted an issue they felt was important in school—the fact that they had to have the school-issue backpack, rather than a backpack of their choice. It is a densely packed recording, full of clever wordplay and allusions to other songs and important people in their lives. Perhaps the highlight for me was how Tadi and Panashe used the motto of the school, ‘Integrity, Justice and Peace’ as part of their song, and challenged the school to treat them with the equality they felt they deserved. They introduced biblical allusions, likening students walking to school with these heavy backpacks to Jesus carrying his cross. Finally, they poked fun at other music and dance styles, singing that they looked like they were ‘shuffling’ under the weight of these heavy bags. Overall, the work was incredibly intelligent and mature. Although Tadi and Panashe were not the highest academically achieving students at McCarthy, the lyrics

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from ‘Six Hours of Pain’ clearly demonstrated that they had a critical and cultural literacy that is not often recognised in schools. In addition to recording the song, the highlight for Tadi and Panashe was meeting the Hip Hop artist L-Fresh, a young man from South Western Sydney and a Street University Ambassador, who had agreed to work with the students on the process of writing. L-Fresh is only a few years older than the students in the Hip Hop program, and the atmosphere in the room changed when he started speaking. This was an important point of reflection for me: while I might gain the grudging respect of the students as a teacher, L-Fresh was accorded respect because he was involved in the industry. The students were rapt when he agreed to ‘freestyle’ for them. I was initially disappointed at Panashe’s and Tadi’s choice of subject matter; to me, school bags didn’t seem like a suitable social justice topic, and I remember trying to encourage them to write about something else, like racism or refugees. I realise now that I was trying too hard to impose my concepts about social justice onto them, and not allowing enough time for the process to work. The following year, when we ran Hip Hop for Social Justice a second time, Tadi and Panashe wrote their own individual songs, each with powerful lyrics about what it was like being a young black man growing up in a predominantly white culture. This episode was important to my future work for two reasons. First, I realised that while a lesson may not have reached the end point I intended, it won’t have necessarily failed as a learning experience for the students; Panashe and Tadi’s learning was evident, despite my beliefs about what they should have focused on. Second, I realised it was inappropriate to expect students to develop a critical consciousness in the space of a couple of hours. That such development requires long periods of growth and reflection was exemplified by the way Tadi and Panashe had matured as artists and songwriters between the first and the second Hip Hop for Social Justice courses at McCarthy. Both students took part in the Justice Citizens program that I ran later that year. Panashe especially, because of his experiences with Hip Hop for Social Justice, was a big supporter of the project and was able to use the skills he had learnt during Hip Hop for Social Justice to help his group during Justice Citizens. My experience with Tadi and Panashe was instructive for another reason. I had begun the Hip Hop project with some clear ideas about suitable topics for young people to be socially active about. For the most part, these were weighty matters that dominated the news cycle at the time, for example, domestic violence, refugees, and substance abuse. Instead, the students wanted to write, sing, perform, and make films about topics that were vitally important to them but I thought were ‘small’ or limited. This reaction exemplifies one of the main fissures in civics and citizenship education today. Some scholars have adopted a Habermasian notion of the public sphere, and the modernist notion of idealised public discourse. From this frame, citizenship should be about weighty issues of public thought, with other topics seen as trivial, commercial or unimportant. More recent postmodernist scholars have argued that this trivialisation of the public sphere is not necessarily a bad thing; it reflects a broadening of the public sphere to include diversities of viewpoint that were previously ignored and unheard.

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References Alexander, A. C., & Welzel, C. (2017). The myth of deconsolidation: Rising liberalism and the populist reaction. Journal of Democracy. Available here: https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/ online-exchange-democratic-deconsolidation/. Bennett, W. L. (2008). Changing citizenship in the digital age. In W. L. Bennett (Ed.), The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation series on digital media and learning. Civic life online: Learning how digital media can engage youth (pp. 1–24). Cambridge: MIT Press. Buckingham, D. (2010). The future of media literacy in the digital age. Media Education Journal, 47, 3–7. Foa, R. S., & Mounk, Y. (2016). The danger of deconsolidation: The democratic disconnect. Journal of Democracy, 27(3), 5–17. Hart, R. P. (1994). Easy citizenship: Television’s curious legacy. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 546, 109–120. Hill, K. A., & Hughes, J. E. (1998). Cyberpolitics: Citizen activism in the age of the Internet. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Karpf, D. (2016). Analytic activism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Levine, P. (2007). A public voice for youth: The audience problem in digital media and civic education. In W. L. Bennett (Ed.), Civic life online: Learning how digital media can engage youth (pp. 119–138). Cambridge: MIT Press. Micheletti, M. (2015). Does participation always have a democratic spirit? In N. Manning (Ed.), Political (dis)engagement: The changing nature of the “political” (pp. 27–52). Bristol: Policy Press. Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs. (2008). Melbourne declaration on educational goals for young Australians. MCEETYA. Mitra, A. (1997). Diasporic web sites: Ingroup and outgroup discourse. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 14(2), 158–181. Morozov, E. (2012). The net delusion: The dark side of Internet freedom. New York: PublicAffairs. Norris, P. (2017). Is western democracy backsliding? Diagnosing the risks. Journal of Democracy. Available here: https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/online-exchange-democratic-deconsolidat ion/. Papacharissi, Z. (2008). The virtual sphere 2.0: The Internet, the public sphere, and beyond. In Routledge handbook of Internet politics (pp. 246–261). New York: Routledge. Papacharissi, Z. (2010). A private sphere: Democracy in a digital age. Cambridge: Polity. Rheingold, H. (1993). The virtual community: Finding connection in a computerized world. Chicago, IL: Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing. Roggeveen, S. (2017). Lowy poll: Are we losing faith in democracy? The Interpreter. The Lowy Institute. Shirky, C. (2010). Cognitive surplus: Creativity and generosity in a connected age. New York: Penguin. The Diplomacy and Public Opinion Program. (2019). Democracy. The Lowy Institute. Retrieved from https://lowyinstitutepoll.lowyinstitute.org/themes/democracy/#section-satisfact ion-with-democracy. Tufekci, Z. (2017). Twitter and tear gas: The power and fragility of networked protest. New Haven: Yale University Press. Voeten, E. (2017). Are people really turning away from democracy? Journal of Democracy. Available here: https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/online-exchange-democratic-deconsolidat ion/. Vromen, A. (2016). Digital citizenship and political engagement. The Challenge from Online Campaigning and Advocacy Organisations. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48865-7_8.

Chapter 4

The Organisation Potential of Networks and Social Media: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract This chapter will describe and analyse the increased presence of technologies, and especially mobile and social media, within our lives. It will acknowledge and discuss the problems and influences of these technologies, and specifically the challenges that are present in the way they are used. The chapter will describe how these technologies have been used to organize social movements such as those described earlier, and the apparent success of these organising opportunities. It will also recognise that there are challenges and limitations to these systems of organising.

1 The Rise of the Internet and the Rise of Social Media It is difficult to argue that the internet, mobile and digital technology and social media are reshaping the way that many of us live our lives. It is easy to point out some of the so-called success stories brought about by this disruption: people are quick to identify Amazon, Uber or even iTunes as examples of digital disruption that have changed our lives, supposedly for the better. However, critics are just as quick to point out, for all these successes, there are concerns and negative effects from this disruption, including job losses, the destruction of entire industries, and the loss of privacy. Schools, and education as a whole, are not exempt from both of these promises and dangers. Indeed, in the case of schools, which deal with minors, there are even greater concerns regarding their privacy and exposure to technological ecosystems. Numerous scholars have analysed the way that the internet and social media have reshaped and are continuing to reshape society and the way members of society interact with each other. It is unhelpful to categorise these scholars as either technooptimists or techno-pessimists—labels with which most of them disagree in any case. These labels serve only to add an artificial binary to a concept that is significantly more nuanced. Rather, it is more valuable to examine the claims that they make within the context of young people and their engagement with civil society, activism and social media. In particular, the focus of this chapter is on how social media and its underpinning technologies might allow or even encourage young people to © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Heggart, Activist Citizenship Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4694-9_4

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engage with civic activism, protests and other forms of action within their cultures and societies. In addition, it is worth discussing the dangers that users of social media, and especially educators and young people, need to be aware of when using digital and social media in this fashion, as well as the question of whether online civic engagement promotes or limits offline civic engagement.

2 The Opportunities Afforded by Social Media A crucial point to make, from the outset, is that digital and social media is not a tool that automatically develops social connections or networks. Rather, it is a tool that can help promote the development of these social connections through the affordances that it provides. In particular, the most recent iterations of the internet, which promote user-created material (and especially when combined with the features of modern smart phones, such as cameras and sound recording) allows for the creation and sharing of content in ways and at a scale that were unknown before. David Gauntlett makes this point: The internet enables humanity to get back onto the track which had been the main stay for centuries, where we at last try to develop bonds and communities and exchange things largely at a manageable social level. (2015, p. 3)

Gauntlett goes on to explain that, in many ways, ‘the internet is ancient’ (2015, p. 1). He argues that the human need to create groups to share resources, and to find efficient ways of doing that, is in fact a very old idea, and the internet is something similar to a digital form of the traditional ‘common’, in that it is a place to share resources held in common. James Arvanitakis and Martin Fredriksson (2016) apply this notion to explore what is meant by property in an age where digital piracy and copying challenges our understanding of the nature of property. Digital technologies have not suddenly opened the door to humanity’s creativity. Rather, it has made it much easier for people to both create and communicate or share this content, and this, in turn, is empowering for those involved. By allowing for the distribution of material, conversations about that material, and collaborations where the material is redeveloped, or ‘re-mixed’, people are using the internet to create—not just artefacts, but community. It is this creation and curation of materials that is central to the development of community. At first glance, this appears to be counter-intuitive. After all, compared to traditional media, where, for example, national newspapers have readerships in the millions, very few people engage with your average blog post. According to some critics, like Natalie Fenton (2012), this suggests an uneven distribution of the relationships of power: Put another way, in emphasising communicational desires and motivations – the need to connect and relate to others (which we should acknowledge as a major facet of social networking and part of its vast success) – we should not fall into the trap of diminishing the importance of who is communicating what to whom. A consideration of who is communicating is a sobering exercise. Usage of social media is highly uneven amongst participants and much content is dominated by a small percentage of people. (p. 127)

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Gauntlett is more optimistic; rather, he argues that it is evidence of Chris Anderson’s (2006) Long Tail—that is, a small number of sites might dominate much of the traffic on the internet, or a small number of tweeters might create much of the content on Twitter, but that is not necessarily a failing when it comes to digital and social media. While it is true that, when viewed through a traditional media lens, the failure of an Instagram post or a blog to gather more than a handful of views might suggest a failed business model, Gauntlett suggests that such an approach is ignorant of why people share their content in the first place. He argues that these creators are motivated not by a desire to sell a product, but rather by a wish to be part of a community. And, crucially, the fact that the internet and digital technology have made it so easy for people to share, means that very little investment in time and money is required to become part of that community. Clay Shirky (2008) is even more explicit about the role that sharing takes in the formation of community. He acknowledges that the dynamics that operate within and between groups are complex, but he argues that new social tools have caused those dynamics to begin to change. In particular, Shirky draws on the notion of organisational cost. Using management within hierarchical corporations as an example, he explains that such structures are put into place to simplify coordination; that is, it is easier for a business to be organised if everyone is only managing a certain number of contacts (or employees). However, establishing and then making use of such organisation comes with an added cost—in economic and time terms, and these costs grow more quickly than the organisation itself, which, Shirky explains, is a reason why, in the past, many organisations did not grow beyond a certain size—the managerial costs for so many employees effectively made further growth prohibitive. But social media challenges this assumption. Indeed, Shirky argues that social media has the potential to cause the transactional costs associated with the hierarchical models of management not just to fall, but to collapse entirely—and that means that it is suddenly much easier to create organisations and groups—and that these groups can rapidly grow to a very large size. However, this sudden change has meant that there are a number of significant differences in the way groups—and society as a whole—interacts. Shirky refers to Philip W. Anderson’s (1972) notion that, at different levels of scale, there are fundamental differences in behaviour. While Anderson is describing an approach to conceptualising science, Shirky suggests that such a notion can be applied meaningfully to explain how our interactions with each other and media might be changed in significant ways through the increase in scale afforded by the internet and digital social media. This is an effect that is particularly relevant in terms of mass media. Shirky argues that the fact that everyone in possession of a mobile phone and an internet connection is now capable of sharing information with everyone else means that there is now mass amateurisation in what was once the domain of media professionals. This mass amateurisation has meant that there are no longer any bottlenecks to publishing. Of course, Fenton would (and does) make the point that simply because everyone can publish content doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone does—and it certainly doesn’t mean that anyone else reads what is published. This is fair point, but it ignores the fact that one example of mass amateurisation—for example in the media industry—has

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led to significant employment challenges. Shirky goes further, though—he suggests that the scale and ease of use means that the division between personal communication and public communication has been narrowed—or in some cases completed eliminated. This used to be managed by filtering—often by gatekeepers within the profession—who decided what was suitable to be published publicly, and what was not. However, now everyone can publish almost anything they choose (admittedly, with some legal limitations)—which means there is no longer any pre-publishing filter. The filtering takes place at a later point, as people decide what to read, and what to share. In a way, it has become crowd-sourced. Shirky goes on to say that that’s not the point anyway; the fact that most blog posts or links only get a few likes or clicks is because they are intended as personal communications (even if they are published publicly) for a small number of friends and acquaintances. This means that not only has personal and public become intermingled, so has the notion of community. Another feature related to the scale provided by social media is the fact that the older models of organisational hierarchies can be replaced by more organic models of collaboration. While Shirky recognises that this is harder than the sharing mechanism described above, he also proposes that the results are much more profound. He also argues that, in this model of production, there is a way to resolve the tragedy of the commons, where shared resources are used up out of a sense of fear. As an example of this, Shirky describes the operation of Wikipedia. Wikipedia relies on the shared edits and contributions of its users. Anybody can create an account and edit articles and pages—there is only a limited checking process. According to Shirky, the situation is almost ‘comically chaotic’ as everyone does precisely what they want to do— and nothing else. For example, I could edit a page about koalas, but nothing else. Such a haphazard approach wouldn’t work in a normal business—but it does, mostly because of the scale of Wikipedia. Shirky even addresses Fenton’s criticism about the concentration of contributors: in Wikipedia, a small amount of people contribute the bulk of the work. This is also true on other social media sites—but this imbalance doesn’t necessarily damage social systems, but instead drives them. This is what Yochai Benkler (2006) calls commons-based peer production. Finally, and particularly pertinent for our discussion here, Shirky notes that the scale of social media means that it is much easier for groups to act collectively. He suggests that these new tools give life to new forms of action—and in the same action—challenge existing social organisations. Shirky focuses on how groups working in smaller areas are able to mobilise large groups of people through the use of social media. Again, he makes the point that, while people organising collectively is certainly not new, the improvement afforded by social technology is so profound that it creates new effects; indeed, it effectively becomes something new. This certainly appears to be the case.

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3 The Organising Potential of Social Media Other scholars have examined how social media and the internet might influence activism and social change, as opposed to society and organisations more generally, This is inspired by the sudden growth in both the internet and also the organisations and individuals who are using the internet seeking to develop social change. Some examples of these organisations and individuals were discussed in previous chapters and it is worth exploring what the research currently states about this topic, too, in comparison with Shirky and others more wide-ranging analyses. Indeed, there are some interesting comparisons to be made about whether Shirky’s suggestions that more is different is relevant for social movements, too. In a similar way to the division between how we study youth civic engagement, there are different traditions of studying social movements and organising and how they are influenced by social media. As the internet grew throughout the 1980s and 1990s, most earlier research was devoted to the mechanics of that change: who was going online, and what they were doing—and also who was not making use of the internet. This led to concerns about addiction, anonymity and social isolation (Nie and Erbring 2000). At the same time, other scholars, such as Gurak and Logie (2013) explored how online campaigns were much quicker than their offline counterparts. This early scholarship coalesced into two main schools of thought. In the first camp, which was made up mostly of scholars who had also studied offline movements, are those who argue that the use of social media (and other related ICTs) increases the speed, size and reach of activism, but hasn’t necessarily had any definitive effect on the processes underlying that activism. This school of thought acknowledges that the scale of activism has changed, but it hasn’t necessarily altered the processes of activism and social movements. Jennifer Earl and Katrina Kimport (2011) describe this as ‘Supersizing Activism’. In this school of thought, using the web allows social movement to add new audience members, increase the speed of communication, allows for wider and quicker research, and significantly reduces the costs of these activities (van de Donk et al. 2004). There is a significant body of research supporting this point of view, and the general conclusion, according to Earl and Kimport is that ‘none of the cost reductions, accelerated speed, or broad distributions leads to qualitative changes in the process underlying activism’ (2011, p. 26). Importantly, Earl and Kimport do note that researchers in this camp do recognise that the internet may improve participation in activism, even if it does not fundamentally change how it takes place. The other school of thought is much more dramatic, and Earl and Kimport call this approach ‘Theory 2.0 Model Changes’. Scholars in this school argue that there is a need to change the theoretical models of how organising and participation take place in order to better describe web activism. There is less research into this approach, but what research there is does suggest significant differences in practice. Schussman and Earl (2004) have suggested that the strategic voting movement is one such new approach to social activism. Manuel Castells (1997) has also commented on new forms of social movements requiring only limited or even no leadership. Bennett and

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Fielding (1999) have suggested that ICTs mean that there is now the phenomenon of flash activism, which is mobilised rapidly, at low cost, and without a standing membership. Another factor is that there might be less of a connection with a social movement. According to Brunsting and Postmes (2002), the nature of activists’ participation has changed too—it is now less driven by a personal connection with a social movement. In a similarity that is reflective of the debates about young people, Earl and Kimport make the point that the two schools of thought might not be competing points of view, but rather the result of different approaches to methodologies. The first group, they argue, have studied mostly what they describe as e-mobilisations: those social movements that use the web mostly for mobilisation purposes, but are, for the most part, quite similar to traditional social movements. On the other hand, other groups have studied what Earl and Kimport (2011) describe as e-mobilisations and e-tactics, which make different use of ICTS—and they have found that current models of social theory are insufficient. Earl and Kimport (2011) have a core observation: they suggest that technologies don’t lead to specific social or political changes. Instead, it is the way that people use different kinds of technology that influences the kinds of social movement that takes place. They argue that, at the most basic level, ‘when some of the most unique tech capacities of the web (i.e. the affordances) are leveraged, we get theory 2.0 effects’ (p. 32). This is due to the way that the affordances of the technology is employed. According to Earl and Kimport (2011), an affordance is the ‘special technological capacities of internet enabled technologies generally, and the web specifically’ (p. 32). Writing particularly in the sense of social movements, Earl and Kimport (2011, p. 32) define affordances as ‘the actions and uses that a technology makes qualitatively easier or possible when compared to prior like technologies’. It is these affordances that allow the internet to be such a powerful tool for organising, including within social movements—but it is not the technology itself which does this, but rather, the way it is used: ‘We hold that it is the harnessing or leveraging of such differences that can perturb previously well-understood social processes, and lead to changes in both processes and our understanding of them’ (Earl and Kimport 2011, p. 33). The most significant of these affordances are the reduced costs. While it is typical to think of the reduced costs for participation, it is also important to consider the reduced costs for organising, as well. The low costs associated with digital organising have meant that a small group, or even one person, can now undertake the work that was previously completed by much larger groups. In addition, the low costs for entry have pulled in new organisers, who are attracted by the ease of organising provided by the technological affordances. But these organisers do not necessarily behave in the same way that organisers in the past did, and do not necessarily correlate with the expectations of social movement scholars. In addition, the kinds of movements that are organised have changed too—for example, people are now willing to organise over causes that might once have been considered frivolous—for example to save TV shows from being cancelled. Furthermore, Earl and Kimport recognise that there is also a reduced need for physical

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togetherness, in order to participate in collective action. That is, people don’t need to be together, as one group in one location, in order to act collectively. This, they argue, is critical to understanding the development of web activism. Meaningful collective action can now be undertaken without people needing to gather together. A good example of this is the Streets Free Summer campaign, undertaken by the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU). While the whole campaign included face to face protests as well, one of the most successful actions was the disruption of the online launch of a new ice cream product. Thousands of supporters of the AMWU flooded Street’s product launch social media presence, causing it to crash twice before being abandoned—all of which could be undertaken by people from their mobile phones, regardless of where they were located. For Earl and Kimport, this is an example of the key contention about social movements and digital technologies: It is worth considering whether e-tactics that well-leverage cost and copresence affordances represent a kind of Web activism that is actually creating a new repertoire of contention. (2011, p. 179)

To explain this, Earl and Kimport draw on the notion of a repertoire of contention. This is based on the work of Tilly (1977) who argued that social campaigners have a range of tactics that they can draw on and use within a given historical moment. As campaigners learn how to protests, they choose their tactics from a particular repertoire that is both historically and culturally located. However, these tactics may change over time, and people may develop new tactics—and it is this area that Earl and Kimport suggest is particularly undertheorised. This idea of new ways of protesting, and indeed, new theories to understand such movements and protests is a central concern of Zeynap Tufekci. Writing after Earl and Kimport, and with the benefit of having seen and studied much of the global wave of protest that characterised the 2010s, Tufekci suggests that there is the development of ‘movement cultures’. She identifies the way that different protest groups have influenced each other, tracing links between #Occupy and other protest movements, and suggesting that participants in these groups are part of a ‘global anti-authoritarian protest culture’ (2017, p. 42). This culture is different to preceding cultures in a number of ways. Firstly, the scale and spread of the culture is unprecedented, and it is supported by the affordances of the internet and digital technology. However, more importantly for Tufekci, is the emphasis placed on participation and horizontalism. This is something that Manuel Castells (1997) also notes: in these organisations, there is often a deliberate decision to avoid placing anybody in formal or even informal positions of leadership. This is often at odds with historical examples of social movements, which have often used a significant structure or hierarchy in order to maintain organisational order.

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4 New Movement ‘Cultures’ Tufekci says that a part of this is related to institutional distrust; regardless of the nature of the political protest and movement, people are concerned about the institutions to the extent that they have lost faith in them—at least to a certain extent. For some, as discussed earlier, disengagement is the only option, but others, such as those that Tufekci and others have studied, suggest new ways of organising our social lives. This takes the form of an ‘adhocracy’—organisations put together as needed, rather than bound by any formal legislative structure. Of course, there are challenges to such an approach, but for this section, it is enough to identify that many social movements take this form and they do it because it is now possible to do it through technological affordances. Another key point that Tufekci describes is that there now appears to be developing a culture of protest—that is, many of the protests develop their own cultures and these cultures are both global and also strongly expressive. The protests that Tufekci describes cut across many political ideologies, and some, such as the Occupy movement, are often not entirely clear in their goals or aims. There is a sense of them being developed over time, just-in-time, rather than being carefully planned and developed. This, too, according to Tufekci, is related to the increased prevalence of web technologies. While she recognises that there are global roots to the protest movement that go back many decades, she points out that it is now, easier than ever, for many, many more people to become part of these movements, due to the prevalence of those technologies. It is also possible for these networks and connections to persist over time, and different locations. All of this contributes to a strongly expressive nature to the protest culture, which, Tufekci argues, appeals to people’s sense of agency. She cites Emile Durkheim’s notion of ‘collective effervescence’ (Durkheim 1965 in Tufekci 2017, p. 89) and suggests that this part of the reward that protestors seek, as opposed to purely instrumental aims.

5 The Risk of Rapid Growth Of course, there are risks associated with using technological affordances for the purposes of organising. These risks relate both to the practice of organising, and how technological affordances might in fact limit the growth of social movements, but also the dangers inherent in using platforms such as social media. There are also concerns, especially in more authoritarian regimes, about how social media might be used against members of social movements that a particular government might not care for. The first risk, and it’s one that has been discussed before, but it is worth mentioning again now, is that there is a danger of falling into the trap technodeterminism; that is, the belief that technology somehow causes, in this case, social movements to form and take action. Of course, that is not the case, and the point is that people and

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not technology that undertake revolutions (as Tufekci puts it) and undertake social movements. Technology may play a role in the formation of these protests and social movements, but it is not a straightforward relationship, and there are many other and different causes that relate to the formation and development of social movements. This notion of technodeterminism and its relationship with democracy, especially, is something that Evgeny Morozov (2012) is part critical of. Morozov discusses the so-called Green Revolution in Iran, which took place after the 2009 Presidential Election. According to Morozov, this revolution was covered by the Western media as an example of the internet being the cause for a new democratic revolution. Morozov writes, Twitter was seen as the critical tool for organising the resistance and producing remarkable results - even through these ‘remarkable results’ were nowhere to be seen. (2012, p. 5)

Morozov notes that the ‘twitterati’ was seen as a pro-democracy movement, with more power and capacity to engender change than national governments or the United Nations (UN). Further, some correspondents even went so far to predict that the prevalence of social media (and mostly Twitter in this instance) was going to be the end of authoritarian governments everywhere. Morozov actually traces the lineage of such ideas back to the Cold War, noting that, during the second half of the twentieth century, there was a belief amongst Western governments, and the US especially, that technology and democracy went hand in hand. However, Morozov points out that the improvements in technology that the West championed during the 1980s—from VCRs to fax machines—did not bring about any breakthroughs in democratisation, and while some authoritarian regimes might have collapsed, others only grew stronger. Such an approach only revealed the intense Western longing for a world where information technology is the liberator rather than the oppressor, a world where technologies could be harvested to spread democracy around the globe rather than entrench existing autocracies. (2012, p. 5)

The failing of Western commentators, according to Morozov, is that they didn’t take into account the context. He cites evidence that many of the tweets that heralded the so-called green revolution in Iran didn’t actually come from Iran; in fact, there was very little evidence of much pro-revolutionary activity within Iran at all. While there might have been a presence of social media, that in itself was not sufficient to cause any form of democratisation. Morozov goes further, however, than simply critiquing technodeterminism. He suggests that the internet and social media can be quite effectively used by authoritarian regimes, either to track down possible revolutionaries and imprison them, or for the purpose of spreading misinformation or disinformation, and hence delegitimising or at least confusing the message of the protestors and would be revolutionaries. In Iran, for example, when the US government intervened to stop Twitter being taken down for site maintenance in order to support the ‘revolution’ taking place, this became a way for the government in Iran to link Twitter with the US government, as a ‘tool of the enemy’ and an ‘instrument of Western power and that its ultimate end is to foster regime change in Iran’ (2012, p. XXXX).

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In addition, other, non-state actors, such as Al-Qaeda seem to be more than capable of using the internet to spread messages of radicalisation and hate especially to young people. And there have been regular concerns raised about how platforms such as YouTube are becoming vehicles for promoting climate change denialism. And Morozov also makes the point that, after Iran, other authoritarian regimes were watching and considering how best to prevent the internet becoming any kind of tool for revolution. In Russia, for example, Morozov describes the way the internet become a mechanism for state-sponsored entertainment, while China simply banned Google in its entirety. Morozov also makes the point that it is foolish to think that the providers of social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter have any particular commitment to democracy, either. The belief in the democratising power of the web, Morozov argues, ruins the public’s ability to assess future and existing polities. One outcome of this is that it is possible to overstate the positive role that corporations play in democratising the world. One example of this is the acclaim that Google received for pulling out of China. This was a business decision, but many commentators presented it as a case of Google standing up for human rights—ignoring some of the less than exemplary labour practices of these employers in the US. In terms of organising, Tufekci argues that social movements need to be cautious about the speed with which they grow. In some instances, she suggests that speed is a weakness, as it does not allow for the developing of mobilising organising capacity. This means that new movements might lack the culture and infrastructure required to respond to changing contexts, and thus are at risk of failing to achieve some of their aims. Another danger is the fact that much of this digital organising takes place in digital spaces that are not public spaces. For example, both twitter and facebook are commercial platforms, and are not bound by any requirements to observe free speech. While it might be straightforward to argue that the solution is to build digital public spaces for organisation, and there have been efforts in this direction, they have for the most part, been only moderately successful. Any such consideration must take into account the fact that these sites are attractive to social agents and organisers because of the size of the network that exists on them - and is that large network that means that they have the scale and reach that makes digital social organising such a powerful (and tempting) prospect. These corporations are the ‘new sovereigns of the digital sphere’ (Tufekci 2017), and they wield as much, if not more, power as traditional media did in the past. However, they work in very different ways to wield that power. This might relate to their decision to publish—or not to publish content that they might consider to be inappropriate on their sites. In some cases, as in the decision to ban Nazis from Twitter (in Australia, for example: https://junkee.com/blair-cot trell-banned-twitter/197904), this might not be a cause for too much concern, but what about other causes that are not supported by Twitter’s executive? Or, indeed, what about their decision to support some causes over others? The impotent fact to note is that there is no guarantee—or even pretence—of impartiality in the actions undertaken by these social media platforms in order to protect their product.

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A related problem is these platforms ability to enforce their policies. This is particularly a problem with hate speech. In many of these platforms, at least until very recently, there was only limited surveillance of what was being said, and how the platforms were being used, which meant that it was possible for some quite distasteful subcultures to flourish. Any chance of having these groups taken down relied on individual users reporting any content they found to be distasteful, and then the minimal number of moderators employed by the platform reviewed and determining whether it was as breach of policy or not. Needless to say the policies are applied inconsistently, causing significant frustration with users (https://www.theverge.com/interface/2019/5/30/18645004/twitter-whitesupremacy-research-nazi-ban-gadde-dorsey). The internet being what is, and people being what they are, this action of reporting people’s content has now been weaponised, and different groups employ it indiscriminately to try to frustrate the views of people with whom they disagree. There is also the question of anonymity. Some platforms allow people to use pseudonyms, and to set up accounts that have very little connection with their physical lives. On the other hand, other platforms, such as Facebook, require some form of identity verification. Neither approach is entirely satisfactory. In the first instance, the use of pseudonyms and the almost perfect guarantee of anonymity means that there is a prevalence of abuse and trolling directed at individuals. Even when one of these accounts is banned, it is a relatively straightforward process to create a new account, and carry on.

6 Protest Movements as Self-organising Systems One of the key features of complex systems is the idea that they are capable of organising themselves without requiring any direction. That is, particularly features within the system exhibit spontaneous organising behaviour, and operate in such a way that individuals receive many of the benefits of working as part of a large group, without requiring any of the costs involved in organising into that group. These organisations seem to emerge from within the complex system itself, rather than being imposed upon the system. Needless to say, there are some clear similarities between this idea and the way that social movements. However, it is worth considering the notion of self-organising systems cautiously. While in a truly complex system, such self-organising potential might develop from anywhere, it is worth noting that within the social media ecosystem, there are various ways of attempting to subvert the development of self-organisation and instead attempting to impose a hierarchical form of order. For example, as the social media industry has matured, it has become possible to monetise the organisation such that tweets, for example, can be promoted, or posts on Facebook can be sponsored. This means that some tweets will always appear prominently, regardless of their popularity or lack thereof, which, on one hand, interferes with the self-organising mechanism of social; media, and on the other introduces another.

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Furthermore, the organisations themselves impose their own order upon this; for example, Twitter recently changed its algorithm so that it now shows ‘top tweets’ rather than a chronological list of tweets—and how these top tweets are determined is still something of a mystery. Examples like this add to the complexity of the system and interfere with the self-organising capacity of the networks.

7 What Does This Mean for Civics and Citizenship Education? In the preceding three chapters, I have discussed the key features related to the changing public spaces and social movement in which young people operate. I have explored the resurgence of social movements, locally and globally, and the way that young people are often at the fore of these movements. I have also commented on the different paradigms of young people’s engagement with civil society, and suggested that young people might very well be disengaging from traditional forms of activism, but this doesn’t necessarily indicate either apathy or ignorance on their behalf. Finally, I have suggested that social media and mobile technology have a role to play in any discussion of civic activism and social movements in the twenty-first century, and explored both the benefits of using social media for organising and activism, and the dangers. In the following chapters, I narrow the focus to civics and citizenship education. My purpose here is to firstly, explain the development of civics and citizenship education from both a global and Australian perspective, before identifying some of the failings with the current model. In the following chapters, I suggest a new conception of what citizenship means, informed by the perspectives of young people themselves, before describing what an approach based on that conception might encompass.

Research Portrait Three: An Exciting Opening The first piece of advice my mentoring teacher gave me when I began teaching was, ‘I don’t care what you do in the first six weeks of teaching, as long as you get the students to behave’. To him, a veteran teacher of more than 20 years, the most important skill for a young teacher to develop was strong classroom management. This was totally at odds with everything I had done at university, where the emphasis was on pedagogy, lesson planning, micro-teaching and content knowledge. I quickly came to realise that none of these mattered unless the students were under control. To my mentor, teaching is a battle of wills, and teachers need a range of strategies—the teacher ‘look’, the ‘non-verbal cue’, the ‘tactical ignore’—if they are to triumph over the students. It is an us-and-them mentality straight out of a war zone. My mentor’s

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evaluations of me generally ignored any pedagogical issues; instead, it was a matter of how long students spent on task, and whether I was aware of everything going on in my classroom. With hindsight, I realised he was helping me develop the fabled ‘eyes in the back of the head’ needed by teachers everywhere. I have since developed these strategies myself and shared them with other teachers. However, early on in my planning for Justice Citizens, I realised this was not what I wanted for this program. I had just finished reading Postman and Weingartner’s Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1971), and for the first time was conscious that how we teach is at least as important as what we teach. This is even truer in a subject like civics and citizenship education, where the very subject matter—democratic process and civil society—would be evidenced in the lesson plans and lesson activities. I knew that if I didn’t ‘walk the talk’, the students would challenge me, and any meaning behind the learning would be lost in a miasma of mixed messages. If I was going to design the lessons in line with the content of the Justice Citizens program, I would also have to alter the way I taught those lessons, and that meant letting go of some of my control. Freire (1970, 1974) writes about teachers becoming students, and students becoming teachers. However, he was mostly talking about adults learning outside the structured confines of a formal schooling system, not adolescent Year nine students. I had some concerns: What if something happened in the classroom while I was relinquishing control? What if someone was hurt? The first lesson of Justice Citizens began after lunch on a hot Tuesday in January. The students had noticed a new class listed on the timetable called Research and Literacy, but I had steadfastly refused to answer any questions about it. Now, as the students sat in front of me, the first thing I did was nothing. I learnt on my desk and allowed students to come in and sit down. The well-organised students—the ones who knew the unwritten rules of school and wanted to follow them—carefully unpacked their bags, taking a brand-new exercise book with Research and Literacy carefully written on the front. Then they watched me expectantly, ready for the lesson to start. Other students—those who either weren’t familiar with the rules of school or who wanted to flout them—talked loudly, pushed each other, or hid behind their school bags and played games on their mobile phones. I waited some more. A few students asked me questions, wanting to know what they should do. I smiled, said nothing and continued waiting. This felt like one of the strategies from the classroom management toolkit: if you wait long enough, students will become silent and you can begin your lesson. Of course, students sometimes see this as a challenge, and you risk losing lesson time while you wait in vain for them to become quiet. That afternoon, however, the class quickly settled and everyone looked at me. Eventually, one brave soul put up his hand and asked, ‘What are we meant to be doing’? I answered, ‘What do you think you should be doing’? That caused a few laughs, and a few worried frowns too. After a short silence, there was a chorus of replies, some of them serious, some less so: ‘We should be sleeping’, ‘We should be on Facebook’, ‘We should be playing games, ‘We should be outside’, ‘We should go home’. A few replies were directed back at me: ‘You should be telling us what we’re

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learning’, ‘You should be writing on the board for us to copy’. And then there were lots of vacant stares. At that point, I felt like I had achieved a small victory. I had first managed to capture the attention of the students, and then show them that participating in Justice Citizens (which to the students was still Research and Literacy) would be different from their more familiar school experiences. I then wrote on the board ‘If you could learn about anything you chose, what would it be’? I was hoping to gauge the students’ interests and provide the opportunity for them to talk about what they wanted to do, and that this would naturally develop into the project I had prepared. I would move from the ‘sage on the stage’ teacher model to the ‘guide on the side’. At least, that was the plan. What greeted this question was complete silence. Thirty faces looked up at me, blankly. I had made a mistake: they were not ready for this discussion. And then, as I watched, the silence was gradually swallowed up by the usual hubbub of a classroom, as students turned back to their friends, their mobile phones, their other distractions. I tried to regain their interest, but I had the feeling that their attention was slipping away from me. I called on individual students, but I only got half answers along the lines of ‘I don’t know’, and ‘Isn’t that your job’? I retreated to my back-up plan—a journaling exercise about their learning in other lessons. I dutifully wrote questions on the board, which the students either answered in their exercise books or ignored, finding distraction in other activities. There was a palpable decrease in tension. For the students, this made sense: they now knew what they were expected to do and were able to do it easily. I was not the only teacher to have difficulty with the first lesson of Justice Citizens. Of the three teachers who were teaching this course with me, only one had attempted to follow the lesson plan. The other two had said that ‘they didn’t feel comfortable’ with the agreed lesson plan, and had changed it into a worksheet. One of them had even made up a list of keywords, placed them in a word scramble, and given that to the students to complete. None of them understood my disappointment or frustration.

References Anderson, C. (2006). The long tail: Why the future of business is selling less of more. New York: Hachette Books. Anderson, P. W. (1972). More is different. Science, 177(47), 393–396. Arvanitakis, J., & Fredriksson, M. (2016). Commons, piracy and the crisis of property. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, 14(1), 132–144. Benkler, Y. (2006). The wealth of networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press. Bennett, D., & Fielding, P. (1999). The net effect: How cberadvocacy is changing the political landscape. Merrifield: e-Advocates Press. Brunsting, S., & Postmes, T. (2002). Social movement participation in the digital age: Predicting offline and online collective action. Small Group Research, 33(5), 525–554.

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Castells, M. (1997). The power of identity. The information age: Economy, society and culture (Vol. 2). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Earl, J., & Kimport, K. (2011). Digitally enabled social change: Activism in the internet age. Cambridge: MIT Press. Fenton, N. (2012). The internet and social networking. In Misunderstanding the internet (pp. 126– 151). New York: Routledge. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (1974). Education for critical consciousness. London: Continuum Books. Gauntlett, D. (2015). The internet is ancient, small steps are important, and four other theses about making things in a digital world. In Creativity in the digital age (pp. 17–33). London: Springer. Gurak, L. J., & Logie, J. (2013). Internet protests, from text to web. In Cyberactivism on the participatory web (pp. 35–56). London: Routledge. Morozov, E. (2012). The net delusion: The dark side of Internet freedom. New York: PublicAffairs. Nie, N., & Erbring, L. (2000). Study of the social consequences of the internet. Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society (SIQSS). Schussman, A., & Earl, J. (2004). From barricades to firewalls? Strategic voting and social movement leadership in the internet age. Sociological Inquiry, 74(4), 439–463. Shirky, C. (2008). Here comes everybody: The power of organizing without organizations. New York: Penguin. Tilly, C. (1977). From mobilization to revolution. New York: McGraw-Hill. Tufekci, Z. (2017). Twitter and tear gas: The power and fragility of networked protest. New Haven: Yale University Press. Van de Donk, W., Loader, B. D., Nixon, P. G., & Rucht, D. (2004). Cyberprotest: New media, citizens and social movements. London: Routledge.

Chapter 5

The ‘Failures’ of Civics and Citizenship Education in Australia

Abstract This chapter begins with a brief summary of the long history of civics and citizenship education both in Australia and overseas. In providing this summary, I will identify some of the key findings from various studies of civics and citizenship education. I will also recognise and discuss the diversity of views of civics and citizenship education in Australia and around the world (and the different emphasis placed on participatory or direct action in terms of activism and the purpose of civics and citizenship education.

1 A Look Towards the Past… In the previous chapters I have outlined some of the key features about how and why understandings of civic engagement might be changing, and what that might mean for existing understandings about active citizenship. In doing so, I have linked these changes to some concepts borrowed from the fields of complexity theory and complexity pedagogy to illustrate the nature of young people’s engagement with social media and, for want of a better term, the public sphere. Now, I return to the main focus of the book, and, in light of the preceding chapters, discuss both the successes and failures of civics and citizenship education, globally and more locally, in a historical context. The purpose of this section is twofold; firstly, it is informative to explore how civics and citizenship education has developed over time, and what different influences have shaped that development. This will provide insights into how the current influences, as outlined in Chapters 1–3, might continue to influence civics and citizenship education well into the twentyfirst century. However, in doing so, I also seek to identify the way that education as a whole, and civics and citizenship education in particular, has been adopted as a political or ideological tool by various actors with which to advance particular viewpoints about education, and more widely, society. Such ideologies need to be examined closely before it is possible to suggest new approaches to citizenship education, which is what I will proceed to do in Chapter 7. This chapter will focus on the history of civics and citizenship education globally and in Australia, while the © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Heggart, Activist Citizenship Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4694-9_5

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following chapter (this chapter) will examine the current (within the last 15 years) context of civics education, more specifically focussed on Australia. Chapter 6 will explore some alternative approaches to civics and citizenship education, both formal programs and informal ones. It is important to note that, while I am critical of some of the approaches to civics and citizenship education that I discuss here, this is not to say that they are entirely without value. Rather, the thrust of my argument is that, however appropriate they may once have been, the changing landscape of civic engagement—and the way young people interact with each other and other actors across that landscape—has rendered most current formal models of civics and citizenship education inadequate. There are some promising approaches, some of which inspired Justice Citizens, but on the whole, it is an opportune moment to begin to re-envision new forms of civics and citizenship education. To begin with, I discuss the models of civics education presented in the works of Plato, Aristotle, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Stuart Mill and John Dewey, as well as more modern scholars who frame civics education around consumerism, environmentalism and globalisation. My intention is to identify the main schools of thought in the history of democracy and then highlight elements of them that are relevant for educating students about democratic participation and critical action, as well as exploring some of their criticisms. By doing this, I demonstrate where in this long tradition I situate my ideas about a complex approach to civics and citizenship education and how they have developed from the preceding schools of thought. To do this, I identify key elements from each thinker and explicate why these are important for the development of my own thinking. Following the traditions of scholarship in this field, for the main part I limit my discussion to Western thinkers; however, I do acknowledge that democracy has a broad history that includes elements from non-Western countries.

2 An Ever-Expanding Concept of Citizenship Since antiquity, education has been seen as an important part of the development of citizens. However, the concepts of what is a citizen and who can be a citizen have changed over time. In the democracy of Ancient Athens, the only people able to be citizens were Athenian men which effectively curtailed the participation in government of most of the population. Although we might term the Athenian model as a participatory democracy rather than the more modern representative model, it behoves us to remember that there was only a limited elite participating in it— and for much of the history of democracy, that has remained the case. The growth in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries of the suffragist and feminist movements, universal access to public education through the popular education movement, and the civil liberties movements has meant that the proportion of the population considered citizens has also grown. As a result, not only has education been broadened to include these different groups, but the mechanisms for participation have increased as well.

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Recently we have seen the widespread co-opting of the term citizen into other arenas; for example, we now regularly describe people as ‘global citizens’, ‘active citizens’ and ‘environmental citizens’, and the easy use with which these terms are used belie the fact that they have less to do with ideas of nationality than with sets of accepted practices and behaviours—in some cases, on a global scale. The idea of ‘citizen’ has moved from a strictly political context to one that has a variety of contextual connotations. This is also true for terms like ‘digital citizenship’, which is commonly used to mean an agreed upon set of behaviours when interacting on the internet. The notion of citizenship has moved beyond strictly elitist and limited notions, and now embraces notions of participation in the public or civil sphere (McKee 2004) and not just the sphere of organised politics—although the notion of a public sphere is a contested one today (Papacharissi 2010). This book argues that we should embrace these expanded notions of citizenship; indeed, the growing definition is part of my decision to use ‘justice-oriented citizenship’ where appropriate instead.

3 Civics and Citizenship Education: A Long History 3.1 Democracy in Ancient Times Civics scholars like James Pocock (1998) traditionally identify Ancient Greece as the starting point for any discussion of democratic thought. However, because more recent scholars (for example, Keane 2009) have identified that the ancient Greeks were building on non-Western models, I will mention these historical antecedents briefly. As my empirical research is based in Australia, I limit much of my commentary to Western influences that have directly shaped Australia’s form of government and thus the discourse from the State about civics and citizenship. Even as the requirements needed for citizenship have changed over time, and, indeed, the idea of what democracy is and how it should function has continued to evolve, the notion that education is the tool to ensure that citizens are capable of participating in this democracy has remained constant (Keane 2009). It would be easy to limit a discussion of education to formal institutions like schools and universities, but such a discussion would ignore the educative role that families and other communities and groups play in non-formal settings, and the education that now takes place through social media and the mass media—which is especially important to my argument. Of course, such an approach necessarily makes this discussion more complex, and there are many actors—and networks of actors—with different relationships interacting with each other. Having said that, this chapter will primarily address the civics and citizenship education to be found in schools: I have chosen this field as it closely resembles the domain in which Justice Citizens took place, but this does not mean that I have no interest in the ways that other apparatus in society function to educate or indoctrinate; indeed, as discussed, such approaches have informed Justice Citizens to no small

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extent. Where appropriate, as befits a critical theoretical approach, I have drawn from these fields to inform my own research and theory development. I make this clearer later (in Chapter 7). The thinkers I discuss in this chapter are seminal in the development of civics and citizenship education, although I am conscious that some of them had less than ideal views towards women, indigenous people and lower classes. While I acknowledge such weaknesses, I hope to take what is useful from their works and apply it to my own, while at the same time avoiding their prejudices. Democracy has a much more expansive history than is commonly supposed. Keane (2009) writes: It turns out that the democratic practice of self-governing assemblies is also not a Greek innovation. The lamp of assembly-based democracy was first lit in the ‘East’, in lands that geographically correspond to contemporary Syria, Iraq and Iran. The custom of popular self-government was later transported eastwards, towards the Indian subcontinent, where sometime after 1500 BCE, in the early Vedic period, republics governed by assemblies became common. (p. xi)

The ancient Athenian philosophers and citizens made further contributions to the development of democracy, although Plato and Aristotle were at best ambivalent about the value of a democratic state. Indeed, Plato argued that ‘tyranny naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme form of liberty’ (Plato in Bloom 1968, pp. 320–321). My work deals directly with the notions of participation by people in the governance of their communities. In the next section I will briefly summarise some of the key figures in the development of democratic schools of thought and practice, before outlining how it applies to my research. It was Aristotle who noted that, for there to be liberty, it was necessary for all citizens ‘to rule and be ruled in turn’ (Aristotle et al. 1995, p. 12). This is a simple encapsulation of three of the important principles of democracy: equality, justice and participation. In order to ensure democracy, the Athenians felt that civic education was vital. In a marked difference to more modern forms of civics and citizenship education today, it was the role of all free and landholding men in the polis, not just teachers or tutors, to ensure that such citizenship education took place. This kind of civic education had two main principles: citizens should be literate and they should participate in the governance of the city-state. The notion that literacy is a necessary prerequisite for participatory citizenship occurs regularly in studies of the history of democratic processes. One recent explication of the value of literacy is Paulo Freire’s work in Brazil. I highlight the work of Freire (1970) here because he is one of the key influences upon my empirical study, although there are other significant thinkers (John Dewey, for example) who have worked to develop our understanding of the role of education in democracy. Like the Athenians, Freire recognised that for a democratic society to function effectively its citizens need to be able to read and write; literacy is the first step in empowerment because it provides access to the mechanisms of power and oppression, and with that access comes the opportunity to alter society. It is important to note here that literacy itself is a term that speaks to the power relations within society; oppressed

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groups have long recognised that being literate in the language of their oppressors provides them with some means of redress (Freire 1970). In today’s world, it is also important to be literate in various ways, including digital and critical literacies. Aristotle’s second principle—that citizens should participate in the governance of the city-state—is particularly pertinent for this discussion about how an individual learns to be an active citizen. Speaking about the nexus between learning and participation, Aristotle said, ‘For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them’ (Aristotle and Sachs 2002, p. 9). Aristotle identified some of the contradictions that still exist within modern civics and citizenship education; that is, it is necessary for young people to not only have experience of acting as a citizen, but also learn to act as a citizen. Aristotle was in favour of this learning and acting, or acting-as-learning, if you will, occurring together. Dewey (1938), too, recognised the role of experience in education, and Freire (1970) would come to describe this thinking-acting fusion as praxis. Justice Citizens, then, is my attempt to blend learning and acting together. This idea of learning by doing was important in Athenian democracy, which was founded on the idea of participation by all citizens. In contemporary Australia, rather than a participatory democracy, we have a representative democracy, which limits the direct participation of the citizen in the running of government. Regardless of this more distant mechanism of power and governance, discourses of civics and citizenship education in countries like Australia, the UK and South Korea, for example, still emphasise the value of active citizenship and participation. In the next sections, I describe and discuss the key ideas of prominent political and educational philosophers who have promoted ideas we now associate with democracy. It is important to note that many of these scholars were doing this in locations where the ruling regimes were openly autocratic, and many of the safeguards that Westerners now take for granted were conspicuously absent.

3.2 Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Active Citizen The Swiss scholar Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) was the most notable proponent of the benefits of democracy in Europe in the eighteenth century; indeed, during the French Revolution he was feted by the Jacobites, who admired his ideas of a social contract and the rights of man (Schama 1989). Although he is more famous for his insistence that the best kind of man is a natural man (Rousseau 1984), and the attributes most desirable in a person—independence, happiness, sympathy and equality—exist in nature when uncorrupted by the influence of civilisation, Rousseau also acknowledged that humans are social creatures who need some form of civic life. For Rousseau, civic education was synonymous with learning to function well in society (Rousseau 1920). He argued that the best form of civic education is one in which an individual learns to ask, ‘What is best for all?’, rather than the more selfish expression, ‘What is best for me?’ This is best achieved through a very specific form of education that he presents in his novelistic treatise, Emile (Rousseau 2012).

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Rousseau’s principles influenced later progressive educators like Johann Pestalozzi (1746–1827) and Friedrich Froebel (1782–1852), who emphasised that each child is an individual who prefers learning experiences that are self-paced and (to a certain extent) self-directed (Brehony 2001).

3.3 John Stuart Mill and Political Education Rousseau was concerned with the education of the character of individuals. John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), on the other hand, explored the idea of citizenship through political participation, with the focus on society as a whole. This was part of his life’s work; as a follower of Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), Mill was responsible for developing many of Bentham’s ideas about utilitarianism, and how a truly just society could be developed. Mill lived up to his own ideals of democratic participation: in his later life, he was a Member of Parliament in England, where he worked in favour of women’s suffrage and supported the development of trade unions. According to Mill, there are two main benefits of participating in democracy. First, there are benefits from people contributing to the development of policy and, more importantly for this discussion, there are significant educational benefits from behaving in such a way. Accordingly, citizens should participate in politics as a means to their own mental education–a mode of strengthening their active faculties, exercising their judgment, and giving them a familiar knowledge of the subjects with which they are thus left to deal. This is a principal, though not the sole, recommendation of jury trial; of free and popular local and municipal institutions; of the conduct of industrial and philanthropic enterprises by voluntary associations. (Mill and Gray 1998, p. 179)

Mill also identifies another common theme to do with citizenship education: the role of the government in determining the curriculum of such an education. Nor was he alone in this—the American statesman, scientist and philosopher, Thomas Jefferson argued that democracy was the fairest form of government, but for a democracy to succeed, it must rely on the faculties of the citizens who make up that democracy; Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree. (1999, p. 274)

Mill remains an important figure in democratic civics and citizenship education. In Australia, Mill’s intellectual fingerprints can be seen in the development of Discovering Democracy, the program developed by the Australian Government to educate all school students about their role as active citizens in Australia. This program is discussed in more detail in Chapter 6, but, briefly, Discovering Democracy, which operated between 1997 and 2007, emphasised the need for the education of collective groups, not just individuals; that is, all citizens (and citizens-to-be, in the case of children at school) needed to be both aware of how their federal, state and local governments work and also be involved in the workings of these governments. These two themes—awareness and participation—are also fundamental to my work in Justice

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Citizens. Like Mill and Jefferson, I want to ensure that students are active in their communities; one of the facets of meaningful civics and citizenship education is that it demands participation from the citizens in order for them to develop the skills necessary to fully participate in the running of their country. I feel strongly that there are links between these ideas and those of current scholars, like Jennifer Gore. Gore (1990) frames this in terms of power: [Empowerment] is not just a discourse or a state of mind. It requires the acquisition of the property of power and its exercise in the accomplishment of some vision or desired future condition. (p. 14)

Thus, when Mill argued that citizens should be involved in political groups it is not only because such groups are often public good, they are also tools with which people may learn the knowledge and skills needed to democratically govern a country.

3.4 John Dewey and the Progressive Movement Although many of the scholars mentioned here recognised the importance of education to democratic nationhood, to this point there has been only limited examination of what such education might look like in the context of a formal schooling system. This became more important as education (like citizen rights) became accessible to all, rather than the preserve of the wealthy. In the US, John Dewey (1859–1952) built upon the work of earlier progressive educators and used the growth of the public education system and universal elementary education to explore the ways education and citizenship intersected. The notion of a citizen who is active within his or her community was central to Dewey’s understanding of democracy. For Dewey, the idea of democracy was intrinsically and inseparably linked to education. Dewey argued that citizenship is more than simply exercising one’s rights as a member of a particular nation state. It is both a state of being and a way of acting; that is, we are citizens not solely because of who we are, but because of what we do. In Education and Democracy, Dewey (1916) wrote, ‘A democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience’ (p. 83). This definition of democracy is significant for democratic education. In contemporary Australia (and to a lesser extent, other countries like the US and the UK), the discourse about civics and citizenship education has mostly focused on notions of government and history. This is especially true in programs like Discovering Democracy. One of my strongest criticisms of this program is that its focus detracts from the essential work of community building—the citizenship element of civics and citizenship education. Dewey recognised the importance of community for the development of young peoples’ civic attitudes and it is his model of civics and citizenship education that I think should be taught in schools. I have modelled Justice Citizens, in part, on Dewey’s ideas.

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Dewey (1916) also argued that democracy was signified not solely by freedom of action, but also by freed capacity of thought—in essence, ‘the freeing of intelligence for independent effectiveness’ (p. 193). For him, schools were, for the most part, undemocratic in nature. There is relevance to his claim over a century later when we still see schools lagging behind the rest of society in embracing democratic growth. This leads, not surprisingly, to a conflict between schools and students: The teacher has not the power of initiation and constructive endeavour which is necessary to the fulfilment of the function of teaching. The learner finds conduits antagonistic (or at least lacking) to the development of the individual mental power and to adequate responsibility for its use. (p. 194)

Dewey was scathing of the ways teachers may be rendered powerless by educational systems. Although Dewey was writing of the US education system at the time, much of his criticism can still be applied to the Australian education system today. Specifically, Dewey identified that teachers had little or no influence upon matters of pedagogy or curriculum, and the direction of school affairs was in the hands of school superintendents, ‘who have not necessarily any expert knowledge of education and who are moved by non-educational motives’ (p. 195). He described this as a ‘profoundly undemocratic autocracy’ (p. 195). Furthermore, Dewey (1916) was critical of the dictation of subject matter, where teachers must teach as they are instructed to do, with little opportunity for decision-making. He argued that this is a ‘deliberate restriction of intelligence, the imprisoning of the spirit’ (p. 196). Dewey then took issue with the argument that teachers are unfit to decide on a suitable curriculum: Moreover, if the teaching force is as inept and unintelligent and irresponsible as the argument assumes, surely the primary problem is that of their improvement. Only by sharing in some responsible task does there come a fitness to share in it. (p. 197)

Accordingly, if teachers are going to be ‘fit’ enough to teach a curriculum, then they must be included in the design process. This respects the professionalism of the teaching body rather than stripping it away by removing the teacher’s role in curriculum design. Unfortunately, many of the criticisms made by Dewey still hold true in Australia. With the advent of the Australian Curriculum (and even before it, with nationwide programs like Discovering Democracy), teachers have even less control over the subject matter that they are required to teach. It might be tempting to argue that having a centrally controlled and dictated curriculum would provide a suitable starting point for young people to learn about their role as citizens in Australia, but I would argue that this point of view is flawed. Civics and citizenship education is predicated upon their engagement of young people; it would be foolish to expect the majority of Australian students to be engaged by the rather dry curriculum offerings that are so general as to be almost meaningless. Instead, it is much more likely that students would be engaged by something that has direct applicability to them or their local community. Teachers therefore need autonomy to identify issues within their local community that will engage students, rather than follow a decontextualised curriculum dictated by the government.

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Finally, Dewey analysed the effect that such a curriculum would have upon students’ abilities to participate in a modern democratic society; like their teachers, students are stifled. Democracy, Dewey (1903) wrote, rests in the principle of moral, self-directing individuality, where behaviour is modified by internal, rather than external authority. This means it is important that education is more than developing skills or learning how to do something; instead, it is about learning how to be something—and for Dewey, what students should be is active citizens. However, education (as it stood a century ago and, I suggest, still stands today) does not cultivate such intelligence. Dewey (1916) wrote: ‘Reform of education in the direction of greater play for the individuality of the child means the securing of conditions which will give outlet, and hence direction, to a growing intelligence’ (p. 199). He reassured his readers that he was not calling for a ‘riotous loosening’ but instead a degree of freedom from oppression. Central to this was the primacy of first-hand experience. I suggest that Dewey’s critique of education is still relevant in Australia. Despite constant calls for and initiatives purporting to be about educational reform, the result for many students is that they continue to study for the sole purpose of passing exams. In fact, the increased weight given to standardised tests like the National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN, a form of standardised testing that all students in Australia undertake every two years) suggests that schooling is heading more than ever in the direction Dewey feared. Instead, we educators should be taking our role in developing the next generation of Australian citizens much more seriously, and this means we should try to cultivate the kinds of intelligence that will best suit citizens of the future. These include critical thought, organising skills, reflection and much more. Of course, such a ‘call-to-arms’ for teachers is also a challenge; few teachers have the experience or skills required for this critical work, although I imagine that they might enjoy developing them. Certainly, in the interviews conducted as part of Justice Citizens research project, teachers generally expressed the desire for more freedom within the curriculum and for opportunities to generate more experiential learning. The role of education, then, is to prepare young people to act in accordance with ideals of democracy. For Dewey, the best way to do this was to ensure that education remained as relevant to the young person as any other part of their existence, such as their home life, their neighbourhood or the playground. Dewey instituted a pragmatic educational approach based on this idea, and, echoing Aristotle, emphasised that students learn best by doing. Thus, if they are to learn to take part in Western democracy, they need to be, from the very start, involved in a school community that mirrors this approach, which means that schools need to be fundamentally restructured to better reflect democratic society, in contrast to the autocratic model upon which most schools are currently based. There have been numerous efforts to explore what such an approach to education might look like. For example, David Zyngier (2007) draws ideas like student-centred learning, experiential learning and empowerment directly from Dewey’s theories and applies them in school–community contexts. Dewey’s ideas were never widely accepted in the US or the UK, mainly because they were perceived as too radical. Having said that, the progressive educational movement still exists today, and alternative schooling systems like the Steiner and

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Montessori schools, as well as other, less well-known models, operate around the world. An Australian example is Korowal School in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. Though not a large school, Korowal states that it is a humanist school whose aim is to ‘prepare students for life as world citizens’ (Values of Korowal School, n.d.). It emphasises the need for all members of the school community to be involved in decision-making. Such ideas are not popular in state or other independent school systems. Dewey’s ideas about education have often been reinterpreted and ‘re-discovered’ before being adapted and implemented in various ways in different educational systems. Indeed, it does appear that there seems to be a regularly repeating ‘fad’ for Dewey-inspired approaches to education that alternates every couple of decades with an insistence on education ‘getting back to basics’. Today there is increasing interest in his ideas about student-centred learning, often expressed as a form of ‘project-based’ or ‘problem-based’ learning. The New South Wales Department of Education, for example, as part of its Futures Learning Directive, discusses the efficacy of project-based learning (PBL) and how it might be implemented in schools: ‘PBL engages students in rich and authentic learning experiences and can be transformative for your teaching practice’ (NSW Department of Education, 2016, ‘Project Based Learning Toolkit’, para. 1). The language of engaging students and authentic learning is reminiscent of Dewey and other progressive educators, although it should be noted that the language of the Department is hardly convincing: [PBL] ultimately requires strong, supportive leadership and a commitment to innovation and contemporary pedagogies. It must be recognised that PBL may need to be adapted to be successful in your context. (NSW Department of Education, 2016, ‘Project Based Learning Toolkit’, para. 1)

3.5 Criticisms of Dewey It is important to recognise that there has also been significant criticism of Dewey (Ravitch 2001; Sykes 1995). From my personal point of view, one of the most salient criticisms is that Dewey appears to have been naive about the dominant ideologies in education. He rarely engages in a critical appraisal of the ways vested interests influence the educational decision-making process or the day-to-day pedagogy of teachers in classrooms. For me, this is an important part of civics and citizenship education, and its absence from Dewey’s work is troubling. For example, within Australia, the drive towards civics and citizenship education in the early 1990s was a directive from the Keating government in an effort to build support for the referendum on the republic. Shortly after the Howard government came to power in 1996, civics and citizenship education was instead used to build a sense of pride in Australia’s democratic history as conservative ideologies came to the fore in the so-called ‘history wars’. Although these are examples drawn from Australia in the late twentieth century, they do highlight how school education is so often politicised.

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Another criticism of Dewey’s work (1916, 1938) that I would make is that he was relentlessly optimistic about social progress and the democratic nature of society. This might have seemed a reasonable assumption in the first half of the twentieth century, when participation in civil society was at its height (Putnam 2001). While Putnam identified an increase in volunteer groups and civic participation in the 1950s and the 1960s, his data was gathered in the US and ignored the troubling rise of totalitarianism in other parts of the world. Furthermore, Putnam described a disturbing decrease in volunteer participation after the 1960s. Dewey’s optimism needs to be re-examined in the light of this changing participation rate. I am not suggesting that people are less involved in civic communities than previously; rather, I am arguing that the nature of participation has altered significantly due to things like globalisation and social media. However, there are a number of key concepts in Dewey that are vital to the type of civics and citizenship education that I am pursuing, principally, the importance of student involvement in, and control of, the projects they undertake. Simply put, if young people are expected to engage with the content at hand, it is vital that it is directed, at least in part, by them and relevant to their own interests. Although this idea exists more broadly, it has particular relevance to civics and citizenship education. Dewey believed students learn best by doing and he argued against the rote memorisation of facts and statistics, as was common in schools of the time (and indeed, had been since the birth of public education in the nineteenth century, notably satirised by Charles Dickens’s Gradgrindian model of education as shown in Hard Times [1996]) and instead suggested that students should learn by actually taking part in the activities that they were learning about. This idea of student involvement, while not exactly new, was a significant departure from the traditional perspective of children being seen but not heard. It is fundamental to the Justice Citizens program.

3.6 Civics and Citizenship Education: An Integrated Subject or a Stand Alone Approach? As the twentieth century drew to a close, there was a sudden growth of interest in civics and citizenship and, by extension, civics and citizenship education, in many countries across the globe. This sudden interest led to a range of different approaches to civics and citizenship education being adopted in different countries. Australian governments, in devising their approaches to civics and citizenship education, took the opportunity to draw from a number of different sources and models. Although there is insufficient space here to analyse each of these approaches in any great detail, the purpose of this section is to contextualise both the next chapter (civics and citizenship education in Australia) and my research generally. One of the foremost analysts of civics and citizenship education policy is the English researcher David Kerr, who was part of the Citizenship Advisory

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Group that published the Crick Report (Department for Education and Employment/Qualifications and Curriculum Authority 1999) into Citizenship in England. Kerr (1999) conducted a comprehensive review of civics education in 16 countries as part of the International Review of Curriculum and Assessment Frameworks. He identified that in the 1980s and 1990s there was a renewed interest amongst governments in civics and citizenship education and suggested this was partly due to concerns about how democracies might be viewed in the new millennium. Kerr concluded that while most countries acknowledged their purpose was ‘the preparation of young people for their roles and responsibilities as citizens’ (p. 2), there was no real distinction or clarity between the countries studied. Classification was difficult because of the breadth and complexity of the different programs available. He did, however, identify that most civics education programs could be classified according to the clarity of the values expressed in the program. For example, citizenship education in the UK had minimal reference to values, while in Australia national values were expressed in general terms. Further along this continuum is South Korea, where there is explicit, detailed reference in civics education to national values. These ideas will be further explored in Chapter 7, along with other theories of civics and citizenship education. Kerr (1999) explored one UK citizenship education program in detail. On the back of the Crick Report (Department for Education and Employment/Qualifications and Curriculum Authority [DfEE/ QCA] 1998), England adopted citizenship as a separate subject in the national curriculum. According to DFEE/ QCA (1998), The teaching of citizenship and democracy is so important both for schools and the life of the nation that there should be a statutory requirement in schools to ensure that it is part of the entitlement of all pupils. (p. 2)

Crick recommended that citizenship be taught as a separate subject, not integrated as it is now in a number of other countries, including Australia (Mellor 2003). This subject is based on concepts deemed essential to democratic practices, including democracy itself, justice, rights and responsibilities, in addition to the skills needed to fully participate in a democracy such as critical thinking, advocacy, and informed and responsible action. The purpose of such a curriculum is to encourage young people to be active citizens—young people who are capable of working together to achieve a more just and equitable society. For this, they need to learn about things like parliament, government, the legal system, the economy, the part the media plays in society and national and international affairs. Australia’s counterpart to the UK’s Citizenship subject will be discussed shortly, but it should be noted that there are significant differences from the UK version, both in content and delivery. The UK version is a separate subject, with specially trained teachers. In addition, its remit is far more wide-ranging, with what would be more properly called citizenship, whereas the Australian version is focused more on civics. The issue of whether the UK’s program has been a success is difficult to discern. A House of Commons Education and Skills Committee, 2007 Report stated:

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It is too early to say with any degree of confidence whether citizenship education is producing the wide range of impacts originally hoped for. Initial evidence from small-scale studies and the experience of individual institutions is promising but on its own not enough. (p. 10)

4 Civics and Citizenship Education in Australia Similar debates to those described above about the purpose of what is broadly described as civics and citizenship education have also taken place in Australia. The purpose of this section is to summarise some of the key developments in civics and citizenship education in Australia—both before and after European settlement. These influenced the development of the Justice Citizens program because I wanted this alternative offering to ameliorate some of the failings of previous, mainstream models. Thus, it was important to be conversant with both the nature of and the education for civics and citizenship in Australia.

4.1 Indigenous Australian Notions of Civics and Citizenship To begin, it would be a mistake to suggest that there was nothing resembling citizenship amongst the original inhabitants of Australia. Indigenous groups would be quick to point out that before European settlement they had systems of government, healthcare and welfare, as well as mechanisms for dealing with other groups of people. In effect, Indigenous Australians were organised into different language groups, each with a form of government: Membership within each family or language group was based on birth right, shared language, and cultural obligations and responsibilities. Relations within groups predetermined categories of responsibilities and obligations to the group and to family. (Dudgeon et al. 2010, p. 26)

and Reciprocity and sharing were and still are important characteristics in Aboriginal society. Sharing along the lines of kinship and family remains an important cultural value. (Berndt and Berndt 1992, p. 24)

Linked with these relationships and kinships were complex notions of citizenship, mostly around the idea of citizenship as belonging, rather than the idea of citizenship as subject that has become more common in the Western tradition (Berndt and Berndt 1992). In many ways, there are links here between Rousseau’s (1984) ideas of a naturally good person, and the societies present in Australia before European settlement. As I will show later in this book, several students of Indigenous heritage who took part in Justice Citizens spoke about citizenship in precisely these terms; that is, citizenship as being part of belonging.

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Throughout this study, I take a broad view of citizenship because the term itself is continually expanding to refer to concepts such as digital citizenship, consumer citizenship, and global citizenship. Consistent with this, I argue that before European settlement Indigenous Australians were citizens within their own nations; they had an agreed set of laws, belonged to different communities and collaboratively worked to address injustices. After European settlement, the situation for Indigenous Australians changed catastrophically. As colonists moved outwards from the original settlements on the east coast in what Broome (1994) called the most ‘fantastic land grab which was never again to be equalled’ (p. 37), they took land from Indigenous Australians, which ultimately led to conflicts and violence, including massacres of women and children (Reynolds 1987). Although not often discussed in school history texts, Molloy and Grootjans (2014) describe these nineteenth-century conflicts as an ‘undeclared war’ (p. 207). Michael Dodson (1993) has argued that, rather than there being an absence of such socio-political structures before British settlement, the existing Indigenous structures were simply ignored: The English colonial legal system itself, in order to impose sovereignty in the way it did, that is providing no recognition of pre-existing structures and rights, had to deny the existence of such structures. This is precisely what it did. (1993, ‘The Prior Rights of Indigenous Peoples’, para. 3)

Reconciling the White colonist view of citizen with that of Indigenous Australians is a challenging prospect, but Raewyn Connell’s notions of Southern Theory (2007) can identify ways forward. According to Connell, Southern Theory ‘shows hidden geopolitical assumptions in northern social theory and discusses a wide range of powerful social thought from the colonised and postcolonial world’ (p. 210). Connell encourages academics to reject the dominance of northern institutions in the production and dissemination of knowledge and recognise that there are alternative knowledge systems present in the South. She writes: There is, in some views, an African knowledge system – or perhaps multiple ones – independent of the Western knowledge system … Similar arguments are made for indigenous knowledge in North and South America, in Australia and elsewhere’. (2007, p. 212)

Connell is careful to warn against the silo approach to indigenous knowledge, but her arguments are persuasive in the context of describing what it means to be a citizen in Australia in the twenty-first century—for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. These indigenous perspectives on citizenship connect not only with notions of Indigenous knowledges, but also with the traditions of post-colonial and anti-colonial theories. Connell’s Southern Theory can be located in this wider theoretical realm. I subscribe to this notion of alternative knowledges, embrace the multiplicity of ways of being a ‘citizen’, and recognise that this might include Indigenous Australian knowledges. In fact, the more recent Western definitions of citizenship— the ones that abstract the meaning from the purely political sense and instead include belonging to a community or group or particular cause—share much in common with Indigenous definitions that emphasise kinship and community.

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4.2 Citizenship Education in the Twentieth Century: Discrete or Embedded? Before Federation, when each Australian state existed as an independent territory, civics and citizenship education existed in the guise of ‘morals and values education’. Although it differed from state to state, this education was, for the most part, aimed at preparing students to take part in the class-based hierarchy present in Australia. Emphasis was placed on virtues like duty, patriotism and working as a productive member of society, as well as knowing one’s place. In this form of education, citizenship was a right granted exclusively to White men, and the most basic act of citizenship, that of voting for government, was denied to much of the population. Nowhere is this more telling than in the fact that Australians were considered to be ‘subjects’ of the British Empire, implying subservience, rather than citizenship. In 1901, the Australian colonies were federated, and the need to forge a strong national identity was added to the requirements for civics and citizenship education. It is important to note that this identity was not one of independence: there was still a great deal of emphasis on belonging to the British Empire, and the virtues of a good citizen remained those of duty, patriotism and military service. According to Print and Gray (2000), ‘civics courses were introduced to NSW schools during this period. The New Education Theorists considered civics education as a discipline that encouraged independent thought and active citizenship’ (p. 1). The emphasis at this time remained on topics like the history of the empire and virtues like duty and patriotism. Regardless of the value of such topics, it is hard to ignore that this indoctrination by the British perspective was hugely successful. Perhaps this is nowhere more evident than in the way that generations of young men volunteered for military service in defence of England and her Empire during the First World War. Throughout the 1920s and beyond, the topics remained very similar. Of course, the idea of a good citizen is a contested one, but in this case, it is clear that young people were being taught to be a specific kind of citizen in school—one who was obedient to authority and understood that their role in society involved voting, paying taxes and being aware of how their government functioned (Print and Gray 2000). By the 1930s, however, a change had swept through the schooling system. In particular, the preceding approach to civics and citizenship education was seen as unimaginative and dull (Print and Gray 2000). Previously, citizenship had been interpreted in a narrow, technical sense, with the result that too much weight was given to understanding governmental structures and the mechanisms of political action, and not enough emphasis had been placed on the kind of active participation that was part of the requirements for a citizen. Perhaps informed by the growing influence of the US, citizenship education now became integrated, alongside History and Geography, into Social Studies. This new approach still emphasised the traditional values of patriotism and duty, but added to the curriculum were new ideas about participation and active citizenship.

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This swing between conservative and radical approaches towards civics and citizenship education, as demonstrated in the first three decades of the twentieth century, is, in my opinion, one of the enduring tensions in the field. As will be described later in this chapter, this debate was still very much present at the end of the twentieth century. So far, this chapter has briefly described the content of the civics and citizenship curriculum—what was being taught last century. Equally important is how it was taught. For the most part, the main pedagogical method employed by teachers from federation through to the 1950s was the didactic passing on of knowledge (Campbell 2013). This approach was further supported by elements of the hidden curriculum that have continued to the modern era. For example, for most of the twentieth century, students sang God Save the Queen, which was the Australian national anthem until 1984. In any normal school subject, such a didactic approach would be cause for concern; in a subject predicated upon active participation it is indicative of what I believe is a deeply flawed understanding of the way the skills and attitudes necessary for active citizenship are developed. The end of World War II signified a period of rapid growth and significant social change in Australia, and it is ironic that, at the time when a principled and wellresourced approach to the teaching of civics and citizenship was most necessary because of the dramatic influx of migrants and refugees, civics and citizenship education was in the process of being phased out. The integrated Social Studies approach was the beginning of the demise of formal civics and citizenship education, as governments and therefore teachers devoted more time to the History and Geography components of the course. According to Print and Gray (2000), this lack of emphasis on civics education reflected the social upheaval present in Australia at the time: Change, prosperity, new values and a new focussing on youth eclipsed the earlier belief that there was a need to address issues of citizenship, national identity and democracy. (p. 3)

And according to Macintyre and Simpson (2009), Post-war migration began in the expectation that newcomers would conform to the host society, and stimulated efforts to codify the nation’s culture and values as part of formal programs of citizenship education, but this yielded to a growing acceptance of ethnic diversity and an appreciation of its benefits. (p. 122)

This growing acceptance meant that by the 1970s any formal commitment to civics and citizenship education had disappeared; it seemed as if civics and citizenship education would be permanently removed from the school curriculum. But by the 1980s and 1990s there was a renewed interest in the subject. Originally, this came in the form of a number of optional subjects that had significant citizenship components, like Commerce in NSW, or Politics in Victoria, but two Australian Senate reports (Education for Active Citizenship in 1989, and Active Citizenship Revisited in 1991) suggested there was a need for a national discussion around the place of civics and citizenship education in Australian schools. This discourse, the resulting curriculum materials and their reception in schools are the focus of the next chapter.

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Research Portrait Four: The Montage Despite my disappointment with the first couple of lessons, I quickly found that I looked forward to each Justice Citizens session. I believe it was due to the fact that I had ownership of this program and I was embracing the freedom offered by a student-derived curriculum. I was not determining the content, structure, outcomes and assessment of this lesson; instead, the students did these things themselves, while I guided and advised. I recognised the shared construction of meaning that was taking place between all of us in the room. After these first lessons, I realised I would need to modify my approach to Justice Citizens. While the students were open to discussing their thoughts about communities, for many this was the first opportunity they had had to do this. In the banking model of education as described by Freire (1970), students are simply there to have knowledge ‘deposited’ in their heads, knowledge they will then reproduce in the form of examinations. There is no place for them to argue about what knowledge is, or what knowledge is important. In fact, there is usually very little choice even about how they might learn. When confronted with the opportunity to do precisely that, most of the students were naturally hesitant. It must have been a challenge to reconsider their roles within school, and how they might subvert the dominant regime. I realised I would have to teach them how to challenge their beliefs so that they could engage with their education instead of seeing it as something that is done to them. My first plan was to propose that young people around the world were capable of engaging in meaningful social change. For example, I found pictures of student groups in Chile protesting about the poor quality of their education and closing down schools and universities. I told them about young North Americans challenging the legal system over wrongful convictions, and French students causing change to the laws regarding the minimum wage. I presented these propositions individually to the students in the classroom. For each proposition (for example, young people can take on multinational corporations and win), I asked students to consider if it would be possible for young people could do this and then move to a side of the room according to their point of view. To start off, most students milled in the centre of the room, unsure about this new game. I would then show the accompanying pictures and stories of the young people taking action on the issues at hand, and we would discuss what they thought about it. Soon they began to spread around the room to demonstrate their opinions. This was the first surprise: most students spent their time in the ‘completely possible’ section of the classroom. This meant that they accepted the idea that young people could challenge corporate interests, change laws, overcome wrongful convictions, close down school systems and much more. Further discussion with the students was enlightening. Nick, a basketballer, very active in the local church and a leader in the class, explained it best. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘It’s possible for young people to do all of these things. It’s just not possible for us to do those things.’ When I pressed him

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on why that might be the case, he said it was because they didn’t know how. No one had shown them. My second surprise was related to how easily the students and I could misunderstand each other. One of the propositions was ‘Young people can challenge large corporations about their health’. It was based on a number of schools in North America that had campaigned successfully to prevent McDonalds opening a restaurant on their campuses. Most students agreed that this was completely possible. However, there was a lot of confusion when I showed them the story to which the proposition referred. Daniel explained the confusion: ‘So, they were protesting to stop McDonalds’ coming into their school?’ I agreed. ‘Oh, that’s wrong. Why would they do that? I thought they were protesting to get McDonald’s built at their school!’ Quite a few students seemed to agree with Daniel. On another occasion when we spoke about the Chilean students protesting about education, the students originally supported the idea of the schools being closed, but only because it sounded like an extra holiday. These conversations were confronting to me; they showed how illiterate the students were about the ways they are influenced by dominant groups in society. I would return to this notion of literacy repeatedly over the course of Justice Citizens. While the students in my class, for the most part, had a functional literacy in that they could read and write English, they were ignorant of the way oppressive forces shaped their understanding of the world. The next activity was designed to identify the students’ own interests and their feelings of capability as change agents. I distributed a post-it note to each students and asked them to write their name on it. Then I projected a two-circle Venn diagram on the board. In the circles were the words ‘I care about this’ and ‘I can do something about this’ (Fig. 1). Above the Venn diagram was a topic such as ‘self-esteem’, ‘healthy eating’, ‘social media’, ‘body image’, ‘the environment’, ‘homelessness’, ‘teen violence’, ‘drug and alcohol abuse’. For each topic, I asked students to place their post-it note

Fig. 1 The Venn diagram

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in the position they felt was most appropriate. The purpose of this activity was to encourage students to consider what issues they are interested in. I had taken the topics from the Mission Australia survey (Fildes et al. 2014) about young people. According to this survey, these were the topics and issues that young people in Australia were most concerned about at the time. What was interesting during this exercise was the range of responses. I was expecting—and hoping—to see a pattern in the responses that could lead to a discussion about that particular issue. Instead, the whiteboard looked like it had been liberally dusted in yellow post-it notes. There was no consensus on the sorts of topics they either cared about or could do something about.

References Aristotle, Barker, E., & Stalley, R. F. (1995). The politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Aristotle, & Sachs, J. (2002). Nicomachean ethics. Newbury: Focus Pub. Berndt, R. M., & Berndt, C. H. (1992). The world of the first Australians: Aboriginal traditional life, past and present. Canberra: AIATSIS. Bloom, A. (1968). The Republic of Plato, translated with notes and an interpretive essay. New York: Penguin. Brehony, K. J. (2001). From the particular to the general, the continuous to the discontinuous: progressive education revisited. History of Education, 30(5), 413–432. Broome, R. (1994). Aboriginal Australians (2nd ed.). Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Campbell, C. (2013, December 5). Teaching and pedagogy (2). Retrieved from http://dehanz.net. au/entries/teaching-pedagogy-2/. Connell, R. (2007). Southern theory: The global dynamics of knowledge in social science. Sydney: Allen & Unwin Australia. Department for Education and Employment/Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (DfEE/ QCA). (1998). Education for citizenship and the teaching of democracy in schools. London: QCA. Dewey, J. (1903). Democracy in education. The Elementary School Teacher, 4(4), 193–204. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: The Macmillan Company. Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York: Touchstone. Dickens, C. (1996). Hard times. Toronto: Broadview Press. Dodson, M. (1993, August). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and citizenship. Paper presented at the Complex Notions of Civic Identity Conference, University of New South Wales. Dudgeon, P., Wright, M., Paradies, Y., Garvey, D., & Walker, I. (2010). The social, cultural and historical context of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. In N. Purdie, P. Dudgeon, & R. Walker (Eds.), Working together: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mental health and wellbeing principles and practice (pp. 25–42). Canberra: Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing. Fildes, J., Robbins, A., Cave, L., Perrens, B., & Wearring, A. (2014). Mission Australia’s 2014 Youth Survey Report. Melbourne: Mission Australia. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Gore, J. (1990). What we can do for you! What can “we” do for “you”? Struggling over empowerment in critical and feminist pedagogy. Educational Foundations, 4(3), 5–26. Jefferson, T. (1999). Notes on the State of Virginia. New York: Penguin. Korowal School. (n.d.). Values of Korowal School. Retrieved from http://www.korowal.nsw.edu.au/ Principlespractice/Values/tabid/465/Default.aspx. Keane, J. (2009). The life and death of democracy (1st ed.). London: W. W Norton.

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Kerr, D. (1999). Citizenship education: An international comparison (International Review of Curriculum and Assessment Frameworks Paper 4). London: QCA. New South Wales Department of Education. (2016). Project-based learning toolkit | Futures learning. Retrieved from https://education.nsw.gov.au/futures-learning/learning-and-teaching/ project-based-learning-toolkit. Macintyre, S., & Simpson, N. (2009). Consensus and division in Australian citizenship education. Citizenship Studies, 13(2), 121–134. McKee, A. (2004). The public sphere. New York: Cambridge University Press. Mellor, S. (2003). Solving some civics and citizenship education conundrums. Retrieved from http:// www.curriculum.edu.au/cce/default.asp?id=9318. Molloy, L., & Grootjans, J. (2014). The ideas of Frantz Fanon and culturally safe practices for aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia. Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 35(3), 207–211. Mill, J. S., & Gray, J. (1998). On liberty and other essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Papacharissi, Z. (2010). A private sphere: Democracy in a digital age. Cambridge: Polity. Print, M., & Gray, M. (2000). Civics and citizenship education: An Australian perspective (Vol. 2009). Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/civics/dem ocracy/ccanded.htm. Pocock, J. G. A. (1998). The ideal of citizenship since classical times. In G. Shafir (Ed.), The citizenship debates: A reader (pp. 31–42). Minneapolis: UOM Press. Putnam, R. D. (2001). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York: Simon and Schuster. Ravitch, D. (2001). Education and democracy. In D. Ravitch & J. P. Viteritti (Eds.), Making good citizens (pp. 15–29). New Haven: Yale University Press. Reynolds, H. (1987). Frontier: Aborigines, settlers and land. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Rousseau, J. J. (1920). The social contract: & discourses. London: JM Dent & Sons. Rousseau, J. J. (1984). A discourse on inequality. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Rousseau, J. J. (2012). Emile. San Francisco: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. Schama, S. (1989). Citizens: A chronicle of the French revolution. London: Random House. Sykes, C. J. (1995). Dumbing down our kids: Why America’s children feel good about themselves but can’t read, write, or add. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Zyngier, D. (2007). Education through elegant subversion. Professional Voice, 6(3), 51–56.

Chapter 6

The Current Climate for Civics and Citizenship Education

Abstract This chapter continues the discussion of the previous chapter and brings it into the twenty-first century. It discusses the influence of top-down, governmentled approaches to civics and citizenship awareness and education in Australia— for example, Discovering Democracy, Values Education, the Australian Curriculum Civics and Citizenship subject and also describe the failures of these approaches, judged both by their own measures and also by the measures of academics and others reviewing them.

1 Defining the Civics Deficit Building on the review of civics and citizenship education and its historical and philosophical arguments as presented in the previous chapter, this chapter seeks to explore the recent climate of civics and citizenship education, with a specific focus on Australian education and policy settings. To begin with, the troubling notion of the civics deficit will be discussed; I will briefly outline what the term means and the role of the Civics Expert Group in establishing the term amongst educators, before considering some of the criticisms of the term itself. Such criticism of the term is important because models of civics and citizenship education have been constructed on the basis of this notion of deficit and this term does not sufficiently describe the complexity of young people’s interaction with civil society—as shown in the introductory chapters of this book. In the second part of this chapter, I will take some time to discuss Discovering Democracy, a federal government initiative that was developed to combat the socalled civics deficit amongst Australian school students. I will analyse the effectiveness of this program, taking into account both the official assessments and other sources. Such an analysis is informative because it highlights how such an approach, which was rated quite highly by independent reviewers, still failed to engage young people and develop any kinds of active citizenship. Such failing is not the fault of the developers of the curriculum, or the teachers who were tasked with delivering it, or even with the students; rather, the program itself was developed with the wrong © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Heggart, Activist Citizenship Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4694-9_6

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kinds of ideas about young people and their engagement; it used an outdated model of civics and citizenship and hence was never going to be popular or educative for young people. In concluding this chapter, I will consider the current climate of civics and citizenship education in Australia, specifically addressing its role within the Australian Curriculum and the review into that curriculum that was undertaken shortly after its implementation, and whether that alleviated some of the mistakes made in Discovering Democracy.

1.1 Education for Active Citizenship One of the most enduring themes in civics and citizenship education in Australia is the notion of the existence of a ‘civics deficit’ (see Ewins 2006; Macintyre and Simpson 2009). This term supposedly describes the lack of knowledge most Australians, and especially young Australians, have about their government. From an educational perspective, such a framing of the problem is of limited utility as it fails to acknowledge the heterogeneous nature of young people and their diverse and often contextual knowledges. However, this construct is used so widely that I feel it is important to engage with it even though I believe that civics and citizenship education should not begin from an examination of the absence of student knowledge, but instead a recognition of lived experiences and knowledges of students. In addition, the idea of a deficit has to be problematised, and the work of the Justice Citizens program was intended, in part, to explore the nature of this so-called deficit and suggest alternative approaches that didn’t begin from a deficit perspective; that is, it was based on perspectives that were grounded in the concerns and forms of engagement that were central to young people. For these reasons it is important to examine closely where the term came from and the context in which it has been deployed. Part of the construct of deficiency concerns a lack of formal knowledge about government procedures. According to Print and Gray (2000), by the mid-1990s, ‘it was clear that many young Australians were remarkably ignorant about political and government systems and their role as citizens’ (p. 4). Even though ‘their role as citizens’ sounds like it could embrace a more maximal idea of citizenship, in reality, Print and Gray argue for no more than a limited understanding of what it means to be a citizen, an understanding characterised by having some knowledge about our political institutions and mechanisms. Indeed, one of the reasons why I chose to develop Justice Citizens was because I wanted to extend the common understanding of civics and citizenship education beyond this formalistic and limited definition of what active citizenship might constitute and make any understanding better reflect the current and emerging trends of young people and their engagement with civil society and the public sphere. The Australian government’s early interest in this subject was symptomatic of a global questioning about the role of civics and citizenship in society and in educational institutions. The broader, global debate sets the parameters further towards an authentic definition of active participation in society. In Australia a growing

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control by the Commonwealth over the delivery and funding of education would have important ramifications on the development of a civics and citizenship education curriculum. The Labor Government in the 1990s had recognised that there was a link between ‘educational achievement and national economic performance in a growing global economy’ (Macintyre and Simpson 2009, p. 123). Australia’s Federation in 1901 had left education in the hands of state governments, but during the 1990s, the Federal government sponsored a move towards greater consistency between the states with the aim of improving economic performance, a move that reached completion with the adoption of a national curriculum in 2014. The first step on this process was a meeting of MCEETYA, later MCEECDYA (the Ministerial Council on Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs) in 1989. This led to the Hobart Declaration, in which the Key Learning Areas were formalised, one of which was Studies of Society and Environment (SOSE, previously called Human Society and Its Environment or HSIE in New South Wales), which included History, Geography, Social Studies and Citizenship Education. This declaration is important because it reaffirmed the central place of civics and citizenship education in Australia. One of the agreed goals of the Hobart Declaration was that the educational systems in Australia should develop knowledge, skills, attitudes and values which will enable students to participate as active and informed citizens in our democratic Australian society within an international context. (MCEETYA 1989, p. 6a)

Civics and citizenship education was about to be thrust into the limelight; in 1989, the Senate Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Training released a report titled Education for Active Citizenship. This report attributed young peoples’ powerlessness and disengagement in civil society to their lack of political knowledge (Krinks 1999). As described earlier, young people were once more framed in a deficit model. The solution to this problem, according to the committee, was to increase the levels of political knowledge amongst young people, with special attention to how they might become more involved in civic society. However, according to the Senate Standing Committee (1989), this education should not be equivalent to force-feeding students with facts about the political system which will either be forgotten because they seem remote and uninteresting, or remembered because they seem curious and arcane (Senate Standing Committee 1989). Instead the Senate proposed a more active approach be required. For example, the Senate Report argued for school–community partnerships and more involvement of young people in their local areas. Another recommendation was that such an approach be integrated into other subjects, rather than existing separately, in order to ensure that the curriculum did not become any more crowded. A second Senate report, Active Citizenship Revisited, was released in 1991, and sought to address three goals: First, it drew attention to the initiatives begun since the first Report, in the hope that readers would make contact with others working in the field of active citizenship and share ideas, successes and failures; second, it assessed the changes that were underway since the previous Report; and, finally, the Report acknowledged criticisms made of the first report, particularly

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6 The Current Climate for Civics and Citizenship Education that the notions of citizenship, democracy and participation in that report were confined to the public or ‘civic’ realm. (Krinks 1999, “Education for Active Citizenship Revisited”)

1.2 The Civics Expert Group These reports led to the formation of the Civics Experts Group (the CEG, later the Civics Education Group) in 1994. The goal of the CEG was ‘to recommend a nonpartisan program to enable all Australians to participate more fully and effectively in the civic life of our country, and thereby promote good citizenship’ (CEG 1994, p. 2). There was a specific reason for the establishment of such a group by the then Prime Minister, Paul Keating. A critical factor in establishing the CEG was ‘the Keating Government’s initiative for a new identity for Australians based upon a republic within our lifetime’ (Print and Gray 2000, p. 5).

1.3 The Civics Deficit The first report from the CEG, Whereas the people…, was published in 1994 and, echoing the two Senate reports, it identified what became known as the civics deficit amongst young Australians. This was characterised as a ‘limited understanding and knowledge about principles of responsible government, the division of power, and the relationship between legislature, executive and judiciary’ (Hunter and Jimenez 1999, p. 22). In order to address this deficit, the CEG (1994) made a number of recommendations, including making civics and citizenship education mandatory in all Australian schools. The CEG recommended that such education should take place mostly within SOSE subjects, but it should also be spread across the curriculum so that it would have applicability to other content that was to be taught. The CEG differentiated between civics education, which was seen to be more limited in focus, addressing the public institutions and mechanisms of government, and citizenship education, which had a broader, more issues-based scope. The overall goal of this new approach to civics and citizenship education was to develop a program that allowed Australians ‘to act as informed, confident, tolerant citizens, secure in their rights and responsibilities as members of a diverse and tolerant society’ (CEG 1994, p. 28). As mentioned earlier, the dominant discourse of the time, supported by the government, was the so-called ‘civics deficit’; however, there were voices of disagreement about this way of defining young people. Although politicians were in favour of more learning about the role of government and the importance of citizens voting, other educational authorities ‘were concerned it go beyond teaching about the system of government and provide opportunities to engage students in activities fostering active citizenship’ (Macintyre and Simpson 2009, p. 124).

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1.4 Criticisms of the Civics Deficit The idea of a civics deficit is a limited tool for understanding young people’s conceptions of civics and citizenship. It derives from an educational model where the purpose of an educational system is simply to ‘fill up’ a student with the required knowledge or skills before allowing them to enter the workforce. This is a reference to Freire’s (1970) banking model of education. Such an approach implies that civic understanding is simply a ‘thing’ that can be applied to everybody equally. In reality, any understanding of civics and citizenship is much more complex, and more nuanced explanations of citizenship, such as those presented by Arvanitakis and Marren (2009) and Harris et al. (2007), focus on its performativity; that is, citizenship is not simply known, but enacted. Educational approaches should take this into account. Another problem with the civics deficit model is that it implies that young people are a homogenous group that lacks understanding about all kinds of civics and citizenship. Young people are no more homogenous than any other section of society in Australia; they represent wide disparities in social class, race and culture, wealth, experience and opportunities. Not surprisingly, these disparities make teaching civics and citizenship a particular challenge, as students have different starting points for learning about these topics. The civics deficit argument was based on a simple definition of civics and citizenship (Senate Standing Committee on Employment and Training 1989), that is, an understanding of the mechanisms and functions of government (although it should be noted that the subsequent federal government initiative, Discovering Democracy, did make some efforts to broaden this subject to include community issues and activism). It did not take into account the other ways that active citizenship might be exhibited. This is at odds with the Hobart Declaration (and later the Adelaide Declaration, Melbourne Declaration and most recently the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Declarations), both of which emphasised the active nature of civics and citizenship, not just the rote learning of facts but instead maximal or ‘thick’ approaches to the subject (McLaughlin 1992). The reason for this limitation is simple; according to the CEG (1994), the ability of a person to participate in political and democratic matters is predicated upon the level of knowledge possessed by that person about both the matter at hand (be it immigration, climate change, education or any of a dozen other topics) and the process by that person can participate (for example, through membership of social movements and political parties, or by protesting). Later research about civic engagement by students (see, for example, Torney-Purta et al. 2001) suggest that this might not be the case, and instead less formal knowledge but more practical experience is central to increasing civic participation. According to scholars like Torney-Purta et al. (2001), there is no causal link between the two factors. Just as an increased civic knowledge does not automatically lead to an increased civic participation, less civic knowledge is no barrier to civic participation. There are a number of examples of this, especially in recent times. One might look at the growth of the Occupy movement where students and other young people were moved to protest, despite the high

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level of ignorance about the issues or political processes demonstrated by some of the protesters. Ultimately, these people were inspired to take action out of a feeling that something was wrong, rather than any specific understandings of the causes of the global financial crises, and it was their perceived powerlessness that specifically drove them to take action in the first place. The growing calls to address structural racism are another example, especially as characterised by the Black Lives Matter movement, which has seen significant community involvement and participation, as well as widespread social media coverage. In the next section, I will discuss the development of Discovering Democracy, as well as the significant criticisms that were raised about the program at its inception.

2 Discovering Democracy Regardless of the concerns about the genesis of Discovering Democracy, AUD25 million dollars was set aside in 1994 for funding a new civics and citizenship education program, and the contract was awarded to Curriculum Corporation to develop. Curriculum Corporation is a partnership of all Australian Education Ministers with a Board representing all education systems and sectors, teachers, parents and the NZ Ministry of Education. It undertakes activities that are in the national interests and that support and augment the work of education systems and sectors. Its curriculum resources and services are dedicated to improving student learning. (Curriculum Corporation 2015)

In 1996, the Keating Government was succeeded by the Howard Government, and this meant that the program underwent a review, despite the previous bipartisan support for it. There were significant changes to the program before it was released as Discovering Democracy in 1997. According to the education minister at the time, David Kemp, the emphasis on developing active citizenship skills to participate in current civics issues was lessened in order that greater emphasis be placed on knowledge of the historical development of Australian democracy. (Kemp 1997, in Macintyre and Simpson 2009, p. 125)

Discovering Democracy was released to schools in 1997 and 1998, with the intention that it would be delivered to students between Years 3 and 10. The program was divided into four academic ranges: Middle Primary, Upper Primary, Lower Secondary and Middle Secondary. Each range had a unit linked to one of four themes: Who Rules, Laws and Rights, The Australian Nation and Citizens and Public Life. These themes followed a developmental progression. For example, the Australian Nation began with We Remember and then progressed through The People Make a Nation, then Democratic Struggles and finally What Sort of a Nation?

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2.1 Criticisms of Discovering Democracy Despite being evaluated as being ‘of high educational quality’ by Erebus Consulting Group (2003, p. 4), there was almost immediate criticism of Discovering Democracy from a range of sources. The criticism mostly related to three areas. First, the conception of Discovering Democracy was flawed due to the deficit model of active citizenship that was adopted. The second criticism dealt with the nature of the curriculum and the learning materials involved with the project. Some critics argued that there was too much emphasis on content knowledge, and that it was the wrong kind of knowledge to interest young people. The final criticism was about the implementation of the project, arguing that there was little opportunity for teachers to improve their own understanding of civics and citizenship education, which ultimately led to the failure of the project in many sites. One of the CEG’s harshest critics was Kerry Kennedy (1997), who argued that Discovering Democracy was predicated upon a poor understanding of young people. This flawed understanding of the heterogeneous group of ‘youth’ meant that the program had failed to identify, ‘the things that matter to young people, the things that can help them understand their reality and give them a stake in the future that rightly belongs to them’ (p. 3). Kennedy wanted more of an emphasis on what he called ‘civic megatrends’ and ‘civic realities’, all of which needed to be linked to values and knowledge that were relevant to young people. Arguing in a way that would become increasingly popular in the next decade, Kennedy suggested that these civic megatrends, which included globalisation, the effects of technology and the challenging nature of global issues, would have ‘the potential to define who citizens are at the end of the 20th century’ (p. 3). In a similar vein, Marjorie O’Loughlin (1997) criticised the content-heavy way the Discovering Democracy course had been constructed, and instead argued for a negotiated approach to curriculum and more emphasis on how young people might affect their own place in society. In particular, she wanted young people to develop ‘knowing that involves going beyond our given identities in a leap of consciousness that brings about a condition of negotiated partnership with others’ (p. 26). This notion of a ‘negotiated partnership’ being one of the goals of civics and citizenship education is a common theme amongst progressive educators. As discussed in Chapter 5, it echoes the idea of ‘living by association’ espoused by John Dewey (1916) almost a century earlier. In my experience, as both an educator and a researcher, I agree with O’Loughlin and Kennedy. It is foolish to think that a student is a tabula rasa, awaiting a teacher to inscribe his or her knowledge upon them. Rather, I am certain that students bring with them a range of interests and concerns, as well as skills and knowledges, to the classroom. The role of civics and citizenship education is therefore to explore these issues in a critical manner, and then provide a means for sharing stories that engender positive social change. Clearly, any effective educational program must start from the basis of what the students already know—what they think is important—not what politicians and policymakers feel is important.

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Otherwise, the most a teacher can ever hope to achieve is compliance, rather than empowerment. The second area of criticism was the content of Discovering Democracy. Macintyre and Simpson (2009) critiqued the process by which the Howard Government changed the focus to emphasise the history of Australian democracy at the cost of minimising the activist parts of the course. Macintyre and Simpson argued: A number of subsequent studies have argued that the Discovering Democracy program placed excessive emphasis on government institutions and civic knowledge, that it failed to raise levels of engagement and that a far more imaginative and participatory approach was needed. (p. 130)

As I see it, this criticism of Discovering Democracy boils down to a simple question: does learning about the history of a country, and specifically that country’s political history, better prepare young people to take part in the democratic life of that country? There is little or no correlation between these two factors as studied by scholars like Shermis and Barth (1982). Having spent more than half my career teaching civics and citizenship in a variety of different ways, I have found that the ‘chalk and talk’ method is clearly the least successful. I agree with the point made by Shermis and Barth (1982): By passively storing up information about historical events… students are held to be disciplining themselves and thereby acquiring the knowledge and attitudes essential for citizenship at a later time. (p. 27)

As is shown in the interviews with students (later in this book), some students do not even realise that they are learning civics and citizenship in Discovering Democracy, while others struggle to remember anything related to what they have learned. Very few identify the ways that what they have learned (or failed to learn) will prepare them for a future in which they can be active citizens. Though I am sceptical of the need for students to know how laws are made, I would argue that it is far more important that students are engaged in their local communities, taking action on issues that they feel are important. The empowerment that students gain from such educative events might inspire further learning and involvement. Shermis and Barth (1982) distinguished between the idea of passively storing up information, which was (and remains) the practice common in many US social studies classrooms, and that of actively learning important decision-making skills, which are fundamental to good government and active participation. More recent scholars, like Bennett et al. (2009) identified that civics instruction in the US continues to be delivered with an academic focus on the forms and structures of government. They write: In such an environment, the best case scenario seems to be for an elite stratum of academic achievers to acquire the outward trappings of dutiful citizenship such as knowledge of government, while the majority of students (particularly those in the lower socioeconomic and academic tiers) are not well prepared for successful careers as citizens at all. (2009, p. 106)

Such approaches, they go on to write, are actually less successful in developing democratic citizenship than more activist ways. This research is supported by Brint

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et al. (2001) who found that teachers emphasised notions of citizenship that related to obedience, order and good work habits, rather than activist notions. At first glance it would appear that Discovering Democracy falls into the category of storing up information, but Macintyre and Simpson (2009) argue that this is actually incorrect: ‘[The program resources] were not didactic and followed principles of inquiry and discovery learning for students, but within a restricted compass and an emphasis on the political process’ (p. 125). Macintyre, in particular, might sound defensive; after all, he was part of the CEG that guided the development of Discovering Democracy. This is not entirely surprising; Thornton (1994) found that teachers’ approaches generally focused on transmission, even though the preferred practice, at least as described in curriculum materials or teacher education programs suggested more activist approaches to pedagogy. What is clear is that there was little consensus about the way that civics or citizenship education was to be delivered in Discovering Democracy, and thus it was delivered in a range of ways, some of which were at odds with the original intention of the program. While there may have been examples of inquiry and discovery learning, there were just as many examples of teacher-centred and didactic approaches (Forsyth and Tudball 2002). Such criticism soon broadened to include the way the program was developed. Even Macintyre and Simpson (2009), agreed that professional development helped teachers work with the new program, although only a minority of teachers were able to undertake it before funding ceased … full implementation was not achieved… [and] use of materials was highly dependent upon individual teachers. (p. 127)

The problem was much larger than the lack of professional development opportunities available. Mellor (2003) identified that only 1% of teachers in Australia had studied civics at an undergraduate level, less than 3% had postgraduate qualifications in corresponding degrees, and, of the teachers responsible for delivering the civics and citizenship curriculum, 33% said that they were not at all confident with teaching civics. Other issues that Mellor identified include the fact that there was no national curriculum (although that is currently changing) and that there was only limited direction for teachers on how best to implement Discovering Democracy. As evidence of this, Mellor cited the confusion over where in the curriculum civics and citizenship education fits. According to Mellor, it should be taught across all the subject areas, thus making the links of citizenship to all facets of public life clear. However, some states adopted a model where it was only taught in Social Studies subjects, while others only implemented it in discrete blocks. Regarding the pedagogy of civics and citizenship education, Mellor suggested that it was best delivered in a problem-solving way, with the emphasis on understanding and solving issues of relevance. This would be essential if students were to remain involved and engaged. However, Mellor provided no advice about how problem-solving approaches might be delivered, leaving that up to individual schools to decide.

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2.2 Official Assessment of Discovering Democracy MCEETYA undertook regular assessments of the efficacy of Discovering Democracy (2007, 2009). These took the form of a civics and citizenship test that a random sample of students in Years 6 and 10 from different schools completed. The results were then compiled, analysed and a report was published. The students who completed the test were judged according to whether they had met specific levels and this was extrapolated to provide a snapshot of the success of Discovering Democracy as a whole. Students in Year 6 were meant to attain level 2, which meant that they were ‘able to demonstrate accurate responses to relatively simple civics and citizenship concepts or issue, with limited interpretation or reasoning’ (MCEETYA 2009, p. 23). Year 10, on the other hand, were to reach level 3: ‘students are able to demonstrate relatively precise and detailed factual responses to complex civics and citizenship concepts or issues and some interpretation of information’ (2009, p. 22). In Year 6, only 54% of students actually reached level 2. This level of achievement was lower in the Year 10 cohort, with only 41% meeting level 3 (MCEETYA 2009). The results reflected similar studies (Torney-Purta et al. 2001; Mellor 2003). Students who came from families with parents who were senior managers or professionals significantly outperformed students from other backgrounds, especially those whose parents were unskilled workers or unemployed. In addition, students from Indigenous Australian backgrounds or from regional areas performed worse than students from metropolitan areas. This might be linked to the greater economic, social and cultural capital possessed by the more successful students.

2.3 Findings from Discovering Democracy There were a number of interesting factors peculiar to Discovering Democracy. For example, MCEETYA (2009) found three main factors, beyond those identified above, that influenced how well students performed in these tests. First, students who participated in outside school civics-related activities (for example, Amnesty International or climate change groups) were more likely to have a higher mean score. Second, schools that provided more opportunities for participation in either school governance or civics-related activities performed better. Third, students who participated in these activities did better than their peers who did not. These findings raise some important points for my work in civics and citizenship education. They indicate that, at least in the case of civics and citizenship tests, there is a crucial ingredient in student success that exists beyond the traditional idea of classroom instruction; that is, it is necessary for students to actually practice some form of activity related to civics and citizenship, and not to simply learn about it. Not surprisingly, the international study by Torney-Purta et al. (2001) found there are also very clear links between student governance organisations like student representative

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councils and student voice groups, and the development of civics and citizenship understanding around the world. In the penultimate evaluation report produced by MCEETYA in 2007, the failure of Discovering Democracy is made clear: By 2007 civics and citizenship education had a more prominent place and an agreed focus in curriculum policies in Australian states and territories than was the case in 2004, but not in such a way as to impact at the school or classroom level (2007, p. xix).

One must question the value of the program if, after 10 years, it had failed to affect those it sought to target. Of course, this is not to say that there were no excellent examples of civics and citizenship education in Australian schools throughout this period. However, these appear to have been the exception, rather than the norm.

3 Values Education After the discontinuation of Discovering Democracy, there was a short-lived attempt at Values Education by the federal Liberal-National coalition government, headed by Brendan Nelson, the then education minister. Ultimately, that too failed and civics and citizenship education ceased to be an important issue in educational discourses, at least until the development of the Australian Curriculum. I will now briefly touch on the main features of the Values Education program before identifying the reasons for its failure. More than AUD30 million dollars of federal education funding was given to implement the National Framework for Values Education (Curriculum Corporation 2005). It had nine values that it sought to promote: care and compassion; doing your best; fair go; freedom; honesty and trustworthiness; integrity; respect; responsibility and understanding; tolerance and inclusion. While these values are no doubt fine aspirations for members of society (although one might argue about whether they are as uniquely Australian as has been claimed), … the problem lay in how the federal government assumed these values and Australia’s history were innate and uncontested, precluding debate about them in the classroom. (Clark 2008, p. 3)

As with the Discovering Democracy program, Values Education was presented in a way that sought to provide one dominant narrative of Australian history. That this narrative was meant to be an object lesson for young Australians on how they should behave or what they should embody was made even more clear by directly linking the nine values to, individually, Simpson (a heroic Australian figure from World War I, who carried wounded soldiers to safety on his donkey), and, collectively, the ANZAC myth. This is not necessarily a bad story in and of itself, but the limited opportunities for students to experience different perspectives meant that students could only experience limited conceptions of citizenship. As a final word, it is worth noting that, like Discovering Democracy, Values Education failed to take into account the wishes of the young people themselves. Clark (2008) wrote,

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While there is certainly powerful political and public pressure to define an uplifting ‘national character’ for young people, I argue there is even more value in letting them analyse such ideas themselves. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, many of them say just that. (p. 4)

4 The Current Climate of Citizenship Education in Australia Civics and citizenship education is currently undergoing something of a lull in the Australian educational policy arena. Even though civics and citizenship education has been included in the Australian Curriculum since 2014, when compared to the interest generated by the release of Discovering Democracy in 1996, there currently seems to be a distinct lack of interest in the topic. Of course, this might be partially linked to the idea that one of the main drivers for civics and citizenship education, the debate about Australia becoming a republic, has almost completely disappeared from the national consciousness.

4.1 Civics and Citizenship in the Australian Curriculum Civics and Citizenship is a part of the Australian Curriculum (ACARA 2013), although it has not been treated with the same importance as other subjects, like English, Mathematics, Science and History, which were the first Australian Curriculum subjects to be implemented, beginning in 2014. Civics and Citizenship Education (CCE) went through a shaping phase between 2011 and 2012, which concluded with the publishing of a shape paper in October 2012. Between October 2012 and December 2013, the writing period was completed, with the draft curriculum available for consultation between May 2013 and July 2013. It was anticipated that the final curriculum would be published at the end of 2013, before implementation began in February 2014. Considering that there has also been a delay in the implementation of the other subjects, it is possible that CCE will not be fully implemented in Australian schools for some years to come. The current state of civics and citizenship within the Australian Curriculum, including the outcomes of the review into the Australian Curriculum, is discussed later in this chapter. At first appearance, there is a great deal of similarity between the Australian Curriculum syllabus CCE and that of Discovering Democracy. Both identify the importance of an active and informed citizenry, citing the Melbourne Declaration as a fundamental influence on the development of content. However, the Australian Curriculum is much more explicit about what that might mean, stating that part of the aim of the Curriculum is to ensure that students develop a lifelong sense of belonging to and engagement with civic life as an active and informed citizen in the context of Australia as a secular democratic nation with a dynamic, multicultural and multi-faith society. (ACARA 2013, p. 5)

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In addition, students are also meant to develop ‘the capacities and dispositions to participate in the civic life of their nation at a local, regional and global level’ (p. 5). Considering the failure of Discovering Democracy, these are lofty aims indeed; there is a clear emphasis on active participation, rather than simply knowing. Both syllabuses identify the difference between civics and citizenship. Civics is the study of political and democratic institutions and the mechanics of government, whereas citizenship is a much broader concept that includes the various multifaceted ways that citizens interact with each other and their governing institutions and contribute to the life of the community. Something that is notably absent from both of the syllabuses is a concern with social justice and equity amongst citizens, which many scholars (Carr 2008; Westheimer and Kahne 2004b) argue is an essential part of active citizenship. I have positioned myself alongside such scholars. An important difference between the two syllabuses is the inclusion of crosscurricular priorities. These priorities, which are common to all Australian Curriculum syllabuses reflect a new and growing commitment to the study of (a) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures, (b) Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia and (c) sustainability. These topics have added a new dimension to the study of CCE. Perhaps because of the increased recognition of the potential effects of globalisation and its attendant problems on the lives of young Australians, there is a greater emphasis on citizenship as belonging to a global community, rather than what has traditionally been defined as a nation state. Indeed, the notion that citizenship has relevance in a global context, rather than simply a national one, is one of the major changes in the current understanding of citizenship. This has influenced the way citizenship is currently being talked about in Australian schools (Criddle et al. 2004), as well as spawning some approaches to civics and citizenship education that are more maximal (that is, student-centred, project-based and experiential) than Discovering Democracy.

4.2 The Review of the Australian Curriculum Before the new CCE curriculum was developed, ACARA released Draft Shape of the Australian Curriculum: Civics and Citizenship (ACARA 2012). This document was intended to serve as a platform to establish what was to be included in the curriculum and the underlying philosophy that informed the curriculum’s development. This Shape paper began by acknowledging that there had been a gradual shift in what is meant by CCE. For example, the Shape paper offers a much broader understanding of what citizenship means: Over the past two decades in Australia and internationally, there has been a broadening of the concepts, processes, and practices in civics and citizenship education. In particular, there has been an increased emphasis on the role of active citizenship, both as explicit content and as a key outcome. (ACARA 2012, p. 6)

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This broader and deeper definition shows that the new curriculum was to contain a more sophisticated understanding of the nature of civil society, and the relationship between education and democracy, than previous incarnations. It rests on the assumption that democracy is a valuable institution, it is active, and reflects the fact that democracy necessarily reaches beyond the constitution and the legislature to genuine civic engagement. This is important because, since the original Shape document, the Australian Curriculum has undergone numerous reviews. The most controversial took place in 2014, and was conducted by conservative academics Ken Wiltshire and Kevin Donnelly. This review limited the scope of civics and citizenship education and deliberately moved away from the activist notions outlined in the Shape paper. David Zyngier writes: A case in point is the Civics & Citizenship Education (CCE) Curriculum. This area of study, for example, is critiqued not by an educator or someone expert in the development of CCE but a professor of constitutional law who states that she is categorically against the inclusion of the cross-curriculum priorities as a general principle. Her view, accepted by the reviewers is that CCE should be more focused on an instrumentalist and content based curriculum teaching about democracy but not teaching for democracy. The review understands CCE in thin electoral terms with a focus on system of government and purposively rejects any discussion of diversity as too ideological. (Zyngier 2011, para 12)

This approach is reflected in the most recent version of the Australian Curriculum: Civics and Citizenship (v 8.3, ACARA 2015), where civics and citizenship education in Foundation to Year 6 is no longer a separate content area, but is instead folded into Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS). It also has no place in the General Capabilities section of the curriculum, which was reduced considerably after the review. Instead of the emphasis on active citizenship as described in the Shape paper, this new version limits the curriculum to content-based aims: ‘The Australian Curriculum: Civics and Citizenship provides students with opportunities to investigate political and legal systems, and explore the nature of citizenship, diversity and identity in contemporary society’ (ACARA 2015). This is a disappointing change and suggests that ACARA, and by extension, schools in Australia, are no longer seeking to develop the same level of active citizenship in Australian students. Another change suggested by the Shape paper was the inclusion of a cultural dimension to citizenship, thus recognising citizenship as much more than its legal definition alone. At a deeper level, this subtler understanding includes notions of identity and belonging, as embraced by the three components to citizenship listed: civil, political and social. That citizenship has become three-dimensional is a marked improvement on past, narrow, curricula. This welcome depth also comes with the more modern definition of citizenship: ‘A modern sense incorporates three components: civil (rights and responsibilities); political (participation and representation); and social (social virtues and community involvement). It includes governance of the country, and to what extent there is representation for them’ (ACARA 2015). While ACARA has recognised the complexity of twenty-first-century citizenship, the above formulation falls short of acknowledging fluidity beyond the school gate. Neither students nor teachers move strictly or only between classrooms and wider

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school contexts. We all travel out the gate and into the community. At the same time, the community in multiple forms—non-teaching employees, volunteers, suppliers, parents, education bureaucrats, expert advisors, excursion hosts and many others interact with teachers, the student body, and the school as an institution. This failure to acknowledge fluid and fractured conceptions of citizenship is likely to detract from the ultimate goal as stated by The Melbourne Declaration: the development of informed and active citizens (MCEETYA 2008). Tudball and Henderson (2013) detail the nation-building role of civics and citizenship education, as well as the contradictions that arise when this agenda is contrasted with the stated desire to see a modern, active and critical population: ‘At one level, studying a nation’s civic traditions through its past can be a form of national identity construction, shaped by the often conflicting influences of political conservatism and the tradition of preparing reflective citizens for a democratic society’ (Tudball and Henderson 2013, p. 5). It should be mentioned that the above authors were basing their arguments on The Shape Paper and not the final version of the Australian Curriculum. However, their comments are astute and rightly identify the shift in focus away from active citizenship that was to come in the final versions of the citizenship curriculum, as highlighted above. Tudball and Henderson (2013) further caution that, as with Discovering Democracy, the active citizenship emphasis is likely to be at least partially sidelined by renewed emphasis on values, as championed by conservative politicians. The stated aim here is usually to remove individual teacher opinions and biases. I believe the unstated aim is to replace innovative approaches by competent professionals with the ideology of the government of the day. From content to delivery, the curriculum in fact defers the goal of agency in those young people who are the recipients of the program. Tudball and Henderson (2013, p. 5), citing Coleman (1972), highlight the mainstream view of young people as citizens ‘always in preparation, but never acting’. Young people might be classed as ‘citizens of the future’, and not ‘citizens of the present’—returning us to the ‘citizens in waiting’ approach highlighted above. Ultimately, while the latest version of the Australian Curriculum is an improvement on Discovering Democracy, there is little innovative or creative vision. Rather, the exciting ideas expressed in the Shape Paper have failed to be translated into the curriculum documents that teachers will be using in the classroom. The discussion on attitudes and beliefs is weak because it fails to explain why these are important. The failure to consider culture of citizenship and senses of agency is a failure to consider not only how to engage students but how to best see them empowered for civic life. There is no point to having citizenship rights if the population is not empowered to exercise those rights. As such, the Australian CCE Curriculum continues to be built on a deficit model. The document does recognise that young people are active outside the classroom and school. Yet this static observation contributes nothing unless there are innovative pathways to bringing this knowledge into the classroom. The obvious agent to create dialogue between the student-at-school and the student-at-large is the educator, yet there is no encouragement or guidelines for teachers to make use of students’ prior knowledge, externally derived knowledge, knowledge forged from lived experience.

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5 Where to for Civics and Citizenship Education? While the Australian Curriculum as a whole, and Civics and Citizenship Education within it remain something of a political football (see Print 2017, for discussions of various ideologically minded reviews and their influence on the subject within the Australian Curriculum), this does not mean that educators and scholars are not continuing to explore the ways that citizenship education is currently being delivered in schools and communities across Australia, or the opportunities and challenges that are present for citizenship educators in the future. Andrew Peterson’s and Libby Tudball’s work Civics and Citizenship Education in Australia (2017) provides excellent coverage of this area, and it is worth highlighting some of the key themes and how they contribute to discussions about the future of civics and citizenship education, in Australia and worldwide. One of the key developments of the Australian Curriculum is the inclusion of three cross-curriculum priorities (CCPs): Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures, Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia and Sustainability. These CCPs provide educators with a useful framework to engage in some directed forms of active citizenship, which is a point made by Tudball. In particular, Tudball suggests that the Australian Curriculum can encourage critical citizenship: This approach aims to empower learners by increasing their capacity to understand the underlying causes of problems and injustices and to be proactive agents of change through engagement in the public sphere. In the new CCC, it is expected that learners will have opportunities to build understanding of societal issues at multiple levels: local, national, regional and global. In critical citizenship pedagogy, students and teachers together take part in defining issues, developing investigations and decision-making processes, as they examine the structures of social injustice. (Tudball 2017, p. 33)

However, Tudball also notes that in some respect, the Australian Curriculum does not go far enough. In particular, she suggests that future iterations of civics and citizenship education need to take on a more global perspective to keep abreast of current conceptions of global citizenship. This theme is supported by Deborah Henderson, who notes that citizenship (and hence citizenship education) is being conceived of less as a relationship between an individual and a state, and more in terms of personal and collective identity (2017). She suggests that such an idea might be useful in encouraging young people to engage with and manage complex, contemporary issues which extend beyond the traditional borders of citizenship. Henderson specifically cites social media as a tool to enable this behaviour—and references Terence McLaughlin’s (1992) call for students to extend their horizons and consider universal issues such as justice and advantage. This theme is taken up by Lucas Walsh (2017), too. Walsh suggests that the traditional, geographically bound definition of citizenship is increasingly irrelevant in today’s world and today’s students, especially when one attempts to address global or universal issues such as social justice. He refers to Immanuel Kant’s claim that lasting peace could only be built on a notion of world citizenship, and refers to the need to develop a citizenship based on cosmopolitanism and universality of access

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to resources. Like Tudball, Walsh recognises that the Australian Curriculum goes some way towards addressing this, especially through the general capabilities of intercultural understanding, but it does not go far enough to engender any action in this respect. In conclusion, this chapter has outlined the recent history of civics and citizenship education in Australia, from an analysis of the much-used but rarely examined term ‘civics deficit’ through the development, and subsequent failure, of various governmental programs like Discovering Democracy and Values Education and up to the Australian Curriculum offerings. However, these are not the only forms of civics and citizenship education that are current within the Australian context, and it would be remiss to overlook other forms. Therefore, in the following chapter, I will examine some of the most common examples of alternative or non-government forms of civics and citizenship education, and describe the different ways that they seek to develop active citizenship and engage with young people. These approaches are naturally quite diverse, and I deliberately examine some programs that work beyond the boundaries of schools or educational institutions. These programs contributed to the development of Justice Citizens, so it is worth exploring their purposes, structures and contexts.

Research Portrait Five: First Steps Penrith is in Greater Western Sydney, an area that is home to almost one in every 11 Australians, many of whom have conservative political views. During the 2010 and 2013 Federal election campaigns, the Labor and Liberal parties spent vast amounts of money trying to sway the voters of Western Sydney in their political directions. One of the most emotive campaigns focused on the ‘asylum seeker’ issue. Asylum seekers who arrived in Australia by boat were vilified by politicians and the media as ‘illegal boat people’ and subject to mandatory detention. Particularly during 2013, with voters like those of Western Sydney in mind, both parties promised that they would ‘stop the boats’. The media responded and related discussions soon made their way into McCarthy College and my Justice Citizens classroom. About two weeks into the program Emmalee mentioned the ‘boat people’ issue. Up to this point, I have been concerned that she was growing frustrated by the whole program, that she wanted to get on with ‘classwork’, so she could demonstrate how good she was at it. Thus far into the course, and there had been no work, homework, assignments or tests, which to her mindset would have meant I wasn’t teaching them anything and were just wasting time. When she raised her hand and asked, ‘What do you think about boat people, sir?’ I was excited. Finally, here was a real topic that we could talk about and research. I restrained myself from sharing my personal opinion about the injustice of the asylum seeker policy, and instead returned the question to Emmalee: ‘What do you think about them?’ Uproar!

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Immediately, there were 20 or more voices crying out ideas and suggestions. Not surprisingly, most of these were in favour of more brutal measures to stop the boats. For the first time, I felt like I had picked something that the students might have a genuine interest in and I was bemused by the uncommon level of excitement. Several of the students were also perplexed. The responses had surprised them too. After settling the class down, I again asked Emmalee what she thought. She was hesitant now and seemed unprepared to answer when the rest of the class was watching her intently. She passed the question to someone else and we were soon having a discussion that included the disturbing use of racial epithets. Jaiden shared that he had heard on Facebook that a woman was assaulted by refugees in nearby Blacktown. I needed to tread carefully now. I could have insisted on adherence to the Catholic teachings of the school, but I knew this would have discouraged many of the students from contributing to this potentially inflammatory conversation. The students were interested because they felt they had something to contribute; they had opinions they wanted to share. I could also have taken the path of uncritical acceptance, suggesting that all opinions should be heard in the discussion, but this was not something that I wanted to do. My understanding of critical pedagogy was that peoples’ lived experiences should be shared but not accepted uncritically. The dilemma was resolved by employing a problem-posing approach. I asked the students to consider what the problems were with refugees and write their responses on the whiteboard. Their reasons were simple and straightforward: Refugees were queue jumpers. They were terrorists. They were going to destroy the Australian way of life. They were Muslims. I was ready for the next step. By reporting on something that he had read on Facebook, Jaiden had opened the door to questions about the truth of that story. I began simply by asking if he knew who originally posted the story. Jaiden hesitated and eventually admitted that he did not know who that person was. I then asked another student to explain why he thought all refugees were criminals. He said it was because they were always stealing things at nearby Blacktown Shopping Centre. I asked him how he knew they were refugees. He said it was because they were black. ‘If that’s the case,’ I said, ‘are all black people refugees?’ This was a loaded question: Panashe was in the room, and he was not a refugee. This question was greeted with an uncomfortable silence. ‘Sir,’ one of the girls said, ‘That’s racist. You can’t say that’. As I suspected, even the mention of colour was seen immediately as racist, regardless of what was actually said. ‘I’m just asking a question. Is that racist?’ The students were unsure how to answer that. Seizing the moment, I asked ‘How many of you have actually met a refugee?’ None of them had.

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References Arvanitakis, J., & Marren, S. (2009). Putting the politics back into politics: Young people and democracy in Australia Discussion Paper. Whitlam Institute (UWS). Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). (2012). The shape of the Australian curriculum: Civics and citizenship. Retrieved from http://www.australiancurriculum. edu.au. Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). (2013). Curriculum draft years 3–10 Australian curriculum: Civics and citizenship. Retrieved from http://www.australia ncurriculum.edu.au. Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). (2015). Curriculum draft years 3–10 Australian curriculum: Civics and citizenship. Retrieved from http://www.australia ncurriculum.edu.au. Bennett, W. L., Wells, C., & Rank, A. (2009). Young citizens and civic learning: Two paradigms of citizenship in the digital age. Citizenship Studies, 13(2), 105–120. Brint, S., Contreras, M. F., & Matthews, M. T. (2001). Socialization messages in primary schools. Sociology of Education, 74(3), 157–180. Carr, P. (2008). Educators and education for democracy: Moving beyond “thin” democracy. InterAmerican Journal of Education and Democracy, 1(2), 147–165. Civics Expert Group. (1994). Whereas the people … civics and citizenship education. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Clark, A. (2008). Teaching national narratives and values in Australian schools: What do students really think about Australian identity and character? Agora, 43(1), 4. Criddle, E., Vidovich, L., & O’Neill, M. (2004). Discovering democracy: An analysis of curriculum policy for citizenship education. Westminster Studies in Education, 27(1), 27–41. Curriculum Corporation. (2015). Curriculum corporation. Retrieved from http://www.civicsandcit izenship.edu.au/verve/_resources/CC_flyer_v3.pdf. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: The Macmillan Company. Erebus Consulting Group. (2003). Evaluation of the discovering democracy program, 2000–2003. Canberra: Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs. Ewins, T. (2006). Re-invigorating civics and citizenship education. Agora, 41(3), 50–52. Forsyth, A., & Tudball, L. (2002, December). Listening to the voices of teachers: How should we define and implement Civics and Citizenship Education in the future. In Proceedings of the Australian association of research in education annual conference. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Harris, A., Wyn, J., & Younes, S. (2007, May). Rethinking young people and civic engagement. Paper presented at the National Youth Affairs Conference, Melbourne. Henderson, D. (2017). Current practice and future challenges in teaching civics and citizenship. In A. Peterson & L. Tudball (Eds.), Civics and citizenship education in Australia (pp. 41–60). London: Bloomsbury Academic. Hunter, J., & Jimenez, S. (1999). Civics and citizenship education: What pedagogy? What possibilities? Curriculum Perspectives, 19(3), 19–29. Kennedy, K. (1997). Citizenship education and the modern state. London: Falmouth Press. Krinks, K. (Ed.). (1999). Creating the active citizen? Recent developments in civics education, politics and public administration group (Research Paper 15 1998-99). Parliament of Australia. Macintyre, S., & Simpson, N. (2009). Consensus and division in Australian citizenship education. Citizenship Studies, 13(2), 121–134. McLaughlin, T. H. (1992). Citizenship, diversity and education: A philosophical perspective. Journal of Moral Education, 21(3), 235–246. Mellor, S. (2003). Solving some civics and citizenship education conundrums. Retrieved from http:// www.curriculum.edu.au/cce/default.asp?id=9318. Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs. (1989). Hobart declaration on educational goals for young Australians. Melbourne: MCEETYA.

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Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs. (2007). National assessment program: Civics and citizenship years 6 and 10 report 2004. Melbourne: MCEETYA. Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs. (2008). Melbourne declaration on educational goals for young Australians. MCEETYA. Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs. (2009). National assessment program: Civics and citizenship years 6 and 10 report 2007. Melbourne: MCEETYA. O’Loughlin, M. (1997). Education for citizenship: Integrating knowledge, imagination, and democratic dispositions. Forum of Education, 52(2), 24–33. Peterson, A., & Tudball, L. (Eds.). (2017). Civics and citizenship education in Australia. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Print, M., & Gray, M. (2000). Civics and citizenship education: An Australian perspective (Vol. 2009). Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/civics/dem ocracy/ccanded.htm. Senate Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Training. (1989). Education for active citizenship in Australian schools and youth organisations. Australian Government Publishing Service. Shermis, S. S., & Barth, J. L. (1982). Teaching for passive citizenship: A critique of philosophical assumptions. Theory and Research in Social Education, X(4), 17–37. Thornton, S. J. (1994). The social studies near century’s end: Reconsidering patterns of curriculum and instruction. Review of Research in Education, 20(1), 223–254. Torney-Purta, J., Lehmann, R., Oswald, H., & Schulz, W. (2001). The international association for the evaluation of education achievement citizenship and education in twenty-eight countries: Civic knowledge and engagement at age fourteen. IEA. Tudball, L. (2017). Theoretical perspectives and pedagogical possibilities in the new civics and citizenship curriculum. In A. Peterson & L. Tudball (Eds.), Civics and citizenship education in Australia (pp. 23–40). London: Bloomsbury Academic. Tudball, L., & Henderson, D. (2013). A new civics curriculum for Australian school: Is it national education?. Hong Kong: The Hong Kong Institute of Education. Walsh, L. (2017). The needs and challenges for global citizenship education. In A. Peterson & L. Tudball (Eds.), Civics and citizenship education in Australia (pp. 101–119). London: Bloomsbury Academic. Westheimer, J., & Kahne, J. (2004b). Educating the “good” citizen: Political choices and pedagogical goals. PS: Political Science and Politics, 37(2), 241–247. Zyngier, D. (2011). Education, critical service-learning, and social justice: The Australian experience of doing thick democracy in the classroom. In B. J. Porfilio & H. Hickman (Eds.), Critical service-learning as revolutionary pedagogy: A project of student agency in action (pp. 135–154). New York, USA: Information Age Publishing.

Chapter 7

Alternative and Non-government Organisation Forms of Civics and Citizenship Education

Abstract It is important to recognise that not all civics and citizenship education is government led or directed. Nor does it all necessarily take place in formal educational institutions—either solely or in totality. This chapter explores some examples of civics and citizenship education from different sectors, including those using participatory action research, social media and school–community partnerships.

1 Introduction Having critically examined the Australian Federal Government’s formal offerings on civics and citizenship education, particularly its Discovering Democracy program, a reader might feel discouraged at the way policymakers failed to grapple with some of the key findings from research about young people and civic engagement, and the resultant failures in implementation of a meaningful national civics and citizenship project. Certainly, there seems little effort to take into account the kinds of changing in the way people are engaging in political and civic life in the development of the Australian Curriculum or its predecessors. Indeed, until conducting my own review of a range of alternative programs, I was concerned about the failure of civics and citizenship education to, first, embrace the important findings about student engagement and empowerment that have been discussed in the preceding chapters, and second, regain its central place as a fully developed and meaningful subject within the school curriculum. However, this concern has been ameliorated by the impressive range of offerings from non-governmental organisations (NGOs), some of which do seek to embrace ideas that I would consider to be at least tangentially related to the changes we are seeing in civic participation in society. Research from a range of intellectual traditions, including participatory action research (Dworksi-Riggs and Langout 2010; Galletta and jones 2010), has produced examples of alternative civics and citizenship programs delivered by NGOs and other interested parties in Australian schools. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the philosophical and theoretical perspectives that have inspired some of these programs, outline the main features of some © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Heggart, Activist Citizenship Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4694-9_7

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exemplar programs, and then identify the ways that these programs might be linked to the notions of complexity theory and complexity pedagogy, and also how they influenced the development of the Justice Citizens program. This chapter outlines a number of alternative programs that develop active citizenship amongst young people. In particular, I will discuss school–community partnerships, action research projects, social justice pedagogy, reconciliation education and the growing role that social media-based programs play in the field of civics and citizenship education.

2 Some Examples of School–Community Partnerships Doing Active Citizenship Education School–community partnerships can be considered as doing active citizenship education. Flowers and Chodkiewicz (2009) have focused on the way that schools might work with local communities in order to encourage active citizenship, particularly in terms of tackling sustainability concerns or addressing climate change. Although they are conscious that such approaches remain a major challenge for educators, they write Local communities and schools remain key sites for the development and implementation of programs that tackle issues of climate change and sustainability and provide more authentic and transformative learning experiences in, about, and for the local environment. (2009, p. 71)

This perception of the value of such partnerships means school–community partnerships are a growing area of interest for Australian schools and education research bodies, especially the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). In fact, so highly does ACER rate the importance of partnerships to school improvement is that it is one of the nine domains for their school improvement tool (the National School Improvement Tool or NSIT). ACER (2012) outlined its vision for good partnerships: There is a range of currently operating partnerships, each carefully planned and designed to enhance student outcomes (for example, to broaden student knowledge, build new skills, develop more positive attitudes, increase engagement levels, create applied learning opportunities for students, or facilitate successful transitions to work or further education or training). (ACER 2012, p. 23)

School–community partnerships have often been mooted as solutions for failing neighbourhoods or minority students. According to Schorr (1997), Schools can become islands of hope in otherwise devastated neighbourhoods. When schools and communities work together to give poor children the supports typically enjoyed by children in middle-class neighbourhoods, they help children avoid a culture of failure. (p. 289)

In the past three decades, researchers have shown the different ways that family and community members can use their resources to support and improve the role

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of the school. For example, Epstein (1995) identified the way that partnerships can improve educational outcomes for students. Davies (1996) found a link between student empowerment and partnerships. Wheeler et al. (2014) explored how universities and communities can partner to increase sustainability outcomes. Bryan (2005) has explained the ways that such partnerships might increase social capital: Partnerships among schools, families, and communities create avenues by which relationship or networks of trust can be formed among administrators, teachers, family, and community members. These relationships provide a source of connections, information, and understandings that parents can draw on to help their children succeed. (p. 221)

A researcher in Australia who has explored the role of school–community partnerships is Karen Malone. From her perspective as an environmental researcher and activist, Malone builds on the work of Putnam (2001) by including children in the determination and construction of social capital. Malone (2012) argues that children were previously seen as the beneficiaries of social capital, but not as generators of it. Now, through school–community partnerships, young people can develop agency and social capital themselves. Furthermore, the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY) has argued that ‘children’s participation is an assertion of agency as the right for children to have adults take what they say seriously and act on children’s views’ (Malone 2012, p. 375). As James and Prout (2008) put it, children can and should be ‘active in the construction and determination of their own lives’ (p. 8). An example of a school–community partnership (and also an example of environmental education) was the Dapto Dreaming program. This program was implemented between April and July 2011, its aim being To provide an opportunity, for children, through research, to have authentic input into the design of the new development in order that it will incorporate the visions and dreams of children growing up in the area. The study utilised the framework of the global Child-Friendly Cities Initiative, basing its student design and outcomes on a rights-based paradigm. (Malone 2012, p. 377)

In my opinion, Dapto Dreaming was a breakthrough program that profoundly influenced Justice Citizens because it conceptualised the idea that young people bring their own experiences to programs in which they are involved, and they can use these experiences; that is, they are not simply objects, but are actually subjects capable of engaging and working with other subjects in society. According to Wyness (2006), Rather than romanticising children’s agency, we need to start from the basic assumption that children are of the social world and are, in a number of complex and not always readily visible ways, socially competent. (p. 237)

As well as recognising the social capital that children already have, Dapto Dreaming set out one possible model for involving young people in school–community partnerships. Malone outlines the way that young people were involved in the project from start to finish—from designing the actual playground areas of the community to actually turning the sod when the construction started. Most of the activities involved were participatory action research projects, the structure of which is discussed in the next

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section. Participatory action research is an effective way of engaging stakeholders in a process as participants rather than bystanders. Finally, Dapto Dreaming is also important for Justice Citizens because of what it suggests about localising children’s experiences. This notion is central to our developing understanding of active citizenship and the way it might be expressed amongst young people; there is a requirement to work with young people on local issues. I use the term ‘local’ carefully; it may mean geographically proximate, as in the case of Dapto Dreaming, but it may also mean issues that are close to young people’s interests, like bullying in schools or the use of technology. Malone (2012) emphasises this point: Drawing on theories of social capital, social agency and environmental competence, this study documented children’s local environmental knowledge and competence by focusing on mobility, accessibility and the affordances identified as significant in the neighbourhood. This, in conjunction with positioning children as active change agents, led to young people recognising their sense of connectedness and stewardship for the local environment and inevitably their sense of responsibility to the planet. (p. 391)

3 Examples of Participatory Action Research Projects Doing Citizenship Education Another example of a form of education that has much in common with more maximal (as defined by McLaughlin 1992) approaches to civics and citizenship education is that of action research. The term ‘action research’ is generally assumed to have originated with Kurt Lewin in the 1940s, as a form of research which linked the idea of experimental research with programs of social action. Lewin argued that such a form of research would have two purposes: it would advance theory, and it would lead to social change. This approach became known as action research, and was popular throughout much of the second half of the twentieth century. Action research had elements of participatory or democratic practice within it from the start: ‘Action research was (and is) an expression of an essentially democratic spirit in social research’ (Kemmis 1982, p. 35). Or, as Minkler (2000) has argued, [It] stressed the active involvement of those affected by the problem in the research through a cyclical process of fact finding, action, and reflection, leading to further inquiry and action for change. (p. 191)

By the 1970s, another generation of radical ideas about social change and research was beginning to develop, as evidenced by the work of the Brazilian educator Paolo Freire and Colombian sociologist Orlando Fals-Borda. According to Minkler (2000), these scholars evolved approaches variously termed ‘participatory research’, ‘mutual enquiry’, ‘community-based action research’, ‘participatory action research’ and most recently, ‘empowerment evaluation’. (p. 192)

This was the birth of what became known as Participatory Action Research (PAR). There is some differentiation between the above approaches, but they do share a basis

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founded on the involvement in the research of those people upon whom the research is being performed, and a commitment to social change, and the term Participatory Action Research (PAR) has increasingly been used as an overarching name for orientations to research practice that place the researcher in the position of co-learner and put a heavy accent on community participation and the translation of research findings into action for education and change. (Minkler 2000, p. 193)

According to Green et al. (1995, p. 12), PAR is a: ‘systematic investigation with the collaboration of those affected by the issue being studied, for the purposes of education and taking action or effecting social change.’ More important, though, are the principles that underpin PAR. Cornwall and Jewkes point that it is not the methods that make PAR distinctive; rather, it is the participatory nature of the process that is ‘the corresponding location of power at every stage of the research process’ (1995, p. 1667). Kemmis (1980) has written at length about the way action research puts the researcher and the people being researched at the same level as co-participants, a concept that is central to both PAR and Justice Citizens. One example of a PAR project that does active citizenship education is ruMAD? This program makes its activist goals very clear: the name itself is an abbreviated form of ‘Are you making a difference?’, which places the focus of the program on youth action and student voice (Black et al. 2009; Stokes and Turnbull 2009). Devised by David Zyngier in 2001 and now used in more than a thousand schools in Australia (Bell et al. 2004), ruMAD? takes students through a series of steps aimed at developing their awareness of their own agency. These steps have a great deal in common with PAR. As part of ruMAD?, Zyngier specifically references The Melbourne Declaration (2008) and its emphasis on the development of an active and informed citizens. In exploring the necessity for programs like RUMad?, Zyngier (2007) identified that teachers in Australia were being blamed for the failures of students, despite excellent results received by Australian students when compared with other OECD countries. To counter what he calls ‘the current dominant paradigm of division and disadvantage’ (p. 52), Zyngier suggests that teachers ‘elegantly subvert’ (p. 51) this through an approach that emphasises new pedagogies and curricula. The term ‘elegantly subversive’ is one that Zyngier uses to describe a program of education that meets the needs of all learners within culturally, linguistically and ethnically diverse (CLED) communities. Summing up the ruMAD? syllabus, Zyngier describes it as ‘values-focused, student-led and at its core starts from student-identified values and visions’ (2007, p. 54). The ruMAD? program has the following aims: 1. The active participation of young people in the community through action research projects 2. Providing young people with opportunities for engaging, independent, studentcentred learning 3. Modelling engaging, student-centred learning for teachers 4. Enabling young people to make a difference in their school or community

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Supporting student leadership Creating the conditions for identifying core values Building social competencies such as self-esteem and confidence Building the skills and knowledge to solve real world problems (Zyngier 2011, p. 140).

As an example of a project constructed using the ruMAD? framework, Zyngier (2007) recounts the story of Whitfield District Primary School and Jessie’s Creek. The students at this school worked with a raft of government and non-government agencies to clean up the local creek. They conducted a biodiversity study of the local area, during which they had to engage with the public, undertake problemsolving activities and work collaboratively to achieve desired outcomes. Zyngier (2007) writes: From the outset they have been at the centre of the campaign to save Jessie’s Creek, mustering community support by producing brochures, conducting surveys and sending letters to government bodies linked with management of the creek. (p. 53)

Four core pedagogical principles underpin this example and all ruMAD? programs. First, the programs come from young people’s own ideas of what is possible. This is important because it inspires young people’s willingness to participate. Second, there is a requirement to create real and lasting change. Zyngier argues that the only way to do this is by tackling the main cause of the problem. A challenge for any civics and citizenship education program is to move beyond the superficial issues and examine what Westheimer and Kahne (2004b) call the macro-economic causes of social injustices. This is one of the main points of difference between service learning and maximal approaches to civics and citizenship education; whereas service learning often has the primary focus on benefitting the learner through involvement in charity work, maximal approaches to citizenship education seek to address both the learner and societal injustices as a whole. An example might further illuminate this point: a service learning program might require a student to volunteer at a soup kitchen for a number of weeks. While this might be considered to be an admirable endeavour, it does little to address the structural causes of homelessness or poverty. On the other hand, a maximal approach to citizenship education (such as those espoused by ruMAD?) would seek to address the causes of such homelessness, such as lack of access to mental health institutions or affordable housing. Third, there is the need to encourage the students and community to work together in order to address issues that are of importance to both groups. While the media often paints young people as divisive influences in the community—criminals, gang members, vandals and dangerous drivers (Giroux 2008), ruMaD? and similar programs challenge this dominant conception and provide a competing narrative: young people, with guidance and support, are capable of being valuable contributors to civil society. The fourth pedagogical principle of the ruMAD? program is that it seeks to encourage the development of critical thinking by young people. This is something that is often overlooked in civics and citizenship education programs, or is presented in a watered-down form. Critical thinking, in this sense, means the capacity of an

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individual to identify the dominant discourses present in society, and the ways these discourses seek to influence members of that society, including the individuals themselves (Burbules and Berk 1999). If one considers how media and advertising affect us, consciously and unconsciously, it becomes apparent that critical thinking is an essential skill in today’s world (Mason 2016). In summarising the pedagogical theory behind ruMAD, Zyngier writes: I have found that students most at-risk of failure, from socially, culturally and economically disadvantaged conditions are the least likely to be exposed to intellectually challenging and relevant material. My considerable experience and research has shown that these students are more likely to be engaged through ‘productive and reciprocal pedagogies’ that draw on students ‘real life’ concerns and enable them to have more control of their lives and be connected to a more participatory social vision of society. The ruMAD? program is firmly grounded and based on these pedagogical understandings. (“Are you making a difference”, n.d.)

There is one final point to be made about ruMAD. As stated earlier, Zyngier’s concern began with students from low diverse or lower socio-economic backgrounds. However, since developing ruMAD. Zyngier (2007) has pointed out that this kind of ‘elegant subversion’ of educational policy has relevance to all students, and not just those from these particular backgrounds: Critically, these systems must connect to and engage with the students’ cultural knowledge while also affirming the different strengths that knowledge forms bring to classroom pedagogy, if those most at risk are to find themselves in schools, so that their knowledges, histories and experiences are validated and accounted for. Such student engagement is an empowering one, developing a sense of entitlement, belonging and identification. Otherwise students are doing time, not doing democracy. (p. 55)

In order to achieve this goal, Zyngier has identified a four-step process which he has defined as CORE (Connect–Ownership–Respond–Empower) Pedagogy. First, teachers and students must connect with students’ cultural knowledge. Second, students need to feel ownership of the learning, and see themselves within the work. Third, there is a need to respond to students’ lived experiences, but also to critically comment on that experience. Fourth, there is a need to empower students with the idea that their actions will make a difference in their lives and in their worlds. Clearly, there is a lot in common with the goals of PAR here.

4 How Justice Citizens Is Extending Participatory Action Research The principles behind PAR, and especially the pedagogical guidance provided by ruMAD?, were important in the development of Justice Citizens. Specifically, I was inspired by the way ruMAD? drew on expertise from community members, thus developing and strengthening community–school partnerships to provide a localised opportunity for students to be part of social change. Equally, that ‘local’ nature of

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the research expressed itself in issues that were of importance to students themselves (Jessie’s Creek, for example) and the range of topics that students chose as part of their film-making for Justice Citizens. However, Justice Citizens extends and develops ruMAD? in three important ways. First, there is more of an emphasis on justice, as evinced in the name of the program. I felt that this was central to the development of the Justice Citizens pedagogy: too many school-based programs focus on ideas of what to learn, but relatively few address the more important question of why we are learning it. I am hesitant to place ruMAD? in this category, because I think Zyngier does foreground the development of active citizenship in the program, but I do think that the focus on justice encourages a focus beyond single issues. By placing justice at the centre of the discussion, the school curriculum is opened to more important questions that can, and should, deal with ideas of democracy, marginalisation and equality—all of which can sometimes be ignored. Second, Justice Citizens had a much more wide-ranging scope than ruMAD? In contrast to the Jessie’s Creek example, where a whole group of students worked on a particular issue, I recognised that within the Justice Citizens cohort there were students with many different knowledges and attitudes, and these characteristics shaped the wide variety of topics they chose to explore. The addition of the film festival at the conclusion of the project became a unifying force for these different projects. Third, Justice Citizens was much more structured than ruMAD? in that there was a specific process that I had set out for it. In this way, my work was more like Freire’s (1970) Circles than a PAR project. In the culture circles, facilitators used primers and codified pictures. In the Justice Citizens Project the equivalent was the beginning activities that I used to encourage students to consider issues of justice and equality; for example, there were a series of true and false statements about student achievements, and a range of short films that showed young people engaging in activism in both physical and digital environments. I had specific goals in mind and had structured the course in such a way as to achieve them; for example, engaging critically with the media is something that I value and hence we spent a great deal of time looking at this, although it should be noted that I did allow for developments and student input as the course progressed.

5 Social Justice Education Often linked to PAR are the theories of Social Justice Education and Social Justice Pedagogy (Schensul and Berg 2004; Powers and Allaman 2012). These terms are often used interchangeably and have a much broader reach than simply education studies; they are used in conflict resolution studies and conflict transformation, for example. According to Hahn Tapper (2014) the growth of interest in this field is due to the realisation that it is essential to include social justice education in schools, and not just models of education aimed at managing conflict between groups.

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I believe that such discussions are part of the changing nature of the civics and citizenship discourse in Australia and around the world. The increased focus on social justice reflects both globalisation and the globalised nature of education, in addition to recognising the inequalities that exist in our world, and the importance of addressing these in educational institutions. Thus, social justice education and maximal definitions of civics and citizenship education share the same commitment to democracy and equality. I will be discussing an example of a project that seeks to bind the two together, but first it is worth exploring social justice education in a little more detail. According to Hahn Tapper (2014), social justice education ‘explicitly recognises the disparities in societal opportunities, resources, and long-term outcomes among marginalized groups’ (p. 412). Tapper argues that this approach to education is related to Freire’s analysis of power in the classroom and that education can either domesticate or liberate both students and teachers; hence education and power are, and always will be, interrelated. Tapper then outlines the importance of identity in shaping and implementing education. In particular, students are disempowered when they are identified as empty, blank slates; instead, ‘they should not be approached as if everyone in the classroom, including the teacher, is starting from the same place in terms of social status and identity’ (p. 414). The identity of the teacher is important too: ‘A teacher needs to create experiences with, and not for, students, integrating their experiences and voices into the educational experience itself’ (p. 414). From this starting point, Tapper identifies what he calls the five core pillars of social justice education: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Freirean notions of social justice An examination of individual and group identities Intersectionality Experiential education Responsibility and Empowerment.

I believe that Hahn Tapper (2014) has identified a common link between the theories of social justice education and civics and citizenship education. Specifically, Tapper writes about the notion of intersectionality as being pivotal to social justice education. Intersectionality can be explained as the connectedness of oppression; that is, oppression experienced in one place is linked to oppression everywhere. Understanding this is a requirement of social justice education—after all, there is no point working to empower one group of people at the expense of another, which, unfortunately, seems to be a side effect of some educational programs. But what is worth considering is that intersectionality also speaks to a more maximal understanding of civics and citizenship education. Such an approach is described by Guevara (2013), who writes Making the connection between poverty and the denial of rights is an inherently political view of the world, and it is asking young people, teachers and their parents to understand their relationship to their national and global citizenship and their responsibility to be aware of what they can do to contribute to global social justice (p. 243)

As borders become more porous, and nation states begin to lose their relevance to the youth of today, students are becoming increasingly concerned about, and involved in,

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global campaigns against oppression. Thus, with Justice Citizens I was faced with two, seemingly contradictory, goals: on the one hand, there was the requirement to localise the issues young people were addressing so that they could bring their knowledges to bear upon them, and on the other, to place these issues within a global context, rather than the previously dominant national one. Fortunately, the solution was straightforward: rather than limiting such issues to geographically local ones, students selected issues that were ‘local’ to their own sites of knowledge. Hence, students could make films about internet freedom if they felt that they were ‘experts’ in that area, or wanted to become so.

5.1 The Global Citizen As mentioned earlier, educators and policymakers have recently increased their focus on the ‘global’ citizen, rather than simply the citizen as a subject of a particular nation. There is a recognition that globalisation has had a profound impact on the lives of young people today (Pleyers 2005), and this impact is likely only to increase in the coming decades. According to Schultz et al. (2009), young people are living vastly different lives, especially in regard to the choices and opportunities available to them, when compared to their parents. These different lives, brought about by the globalising aspects of education and employment, mean that young people’s rights and responsibilities are changing too. They have concerns about the economy, their quality of life and their ability to span national and religious boundaries. Schultz et al. (2009) write: Accordingly, young people are often overwhelmed by both local and global issues and do not necessarily have many resources or opportunities to engage in activities that allows them to process this surge of information, or act upon the interests or concerns it generates. (p. 1024)

Nor are young people’s concerns limited to the issues mentioned above; Harris et al. (2007) identified that young people are concerned about issues like war on a global scale, social divisions, and social disharmony brought about by the intersection of different races and religions. However, research by Eckersley et al. (2007) has identified that young people also often want to contribute to solving such problems but are unsure about how they might participate in these solutions. These issues are complex. Just as globalisation has had both positive and negative effects upon people’s lives generally, the reactions of young people in Australia to the effects of globalisation have been mixed (Dwyer and Wyn 2004). Globalisation, which has brought about rapid social change as well as increased consumer markets and new technologies, will continue to create greater opportunities for connection amongst young people. The paradox is that these greater opportunities for connection have also led to increased fears of diversity and divisions within society. According to Schultz et al. (2009), this raises questions about ‘the ways and places in which young people will need to engage and the new tools and resources they will need to equip them for emerging forms of participation and exchange’ (p. 1023). I believe

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this fear of diversity has been inflamed by the media and by government policies that emphasise personal and national insecurity. The intersection of the media, active citizenship and young people is particularly relevant in the Justice Citizens project. These concerns have been recognised by Australia’s state and federal governments. In addition to the wording of the Australian Curriculum, which makes specific reference to ‘citizens in a global context’, governments in New South Wales and Victoria have identified the importance of developing ‘global citizens’. According to Schultz et al. (2009), there have been numerous critiques of this concept, most notably about the lack of training for teachers in these areas. Schultz et al. (2009) emphasise the importance of young people learning not just about the issues, but also the importance of taking action and how to do it: ‘There is a growing awareness and recognition that young people’s citizenship means supporting their full participation in their communities now, as well as in the future’ (p. 1024). Unfortunately, in ways that mirror many of the mistakes made in Discovering Democracy, teachers and educational institutions still appear unprepared to allow young people to fully participate in their communities, instead opting for simplistic, didactic, solutions. Schultz et al. (2009) write: ‘Many educators have relied and often still do rely on resources that do not allow for experiential, youth led learning’ (p. 1024). Schultz et al. (2009) outline an example of active citizenship-centred, youth-led, global learning: the Global Connects Program. Developed by PLAN International and based on a community cultural development framework, from the outset the Global Connects Program places children in the position of decision makers. In the example cited by Schultz et al. (2009), middle school children in Melbourne engaged in conversations over the course of six months with youth groups in Indonesia. The two groups exchanged communication pieces about issues that they felt were of significance to their lives. These pieces included letters and posters, as well as short films. Crucially, the global elements of technology made this project more feasible than would have been previously possible, and much more relevant and engaging to the young people involved. Having begun communicating with each other, the next step of the Global Connects Program was for the two groups to identify common issues, and then establish action plans to address these issues in their local communities. The project was intended to develop active citizenship skills: ‘As a result, PLAN expects that children will undergo more of a personal transformative experience than they would if they were passive recipients of information’ (Schultz et al. 2009, p. 1025). This appears to have occurred: [Students] demonstrated a number of skills and personal changes that have allowed them to engage as active citizens, within their own communities and in wider national and global communities, now and in the future. (p. 1027)

There are three crucial factors that separate successful programs like Global Connects from the discredited Discovering Democracy. First, and most importantly, Global Connects requires that students make decisions about issues that they think are of importance. Although there were elements of Discovering Democracy that allowed

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for students to explore topics of their own interest, these were limited in scope, and not the whole purpose of that project. Second, there is much greater emphasis on the present in Global Connects than was in Discovering Democracy. Indeed, in Global Connects, this is the only content that is addressed, whereas Discovering Democracy placed a great deal more importance on historical matters. This is important because, as mentioned earlier it is important to focus civics and citizenship education on the things that matter to young people, and not on the things that matter to the people who write education policies (Kennedy 1997; O’Loughlin 1997). Third, Global Connects specifically addresses citizenship knowledge, rather than civics knowledge. Each project is community based, even if that community is an international one. In this way, the program is not concerned with the mechanisms of voting or electing representatives, or the ways laws are made, but rather it addresses how community members—the students taking part in the project themselves—can work to address problems in those same communities. This suggests that young people do not need an encyclopaedic knowledge of civic laws and processes in order to be active citizens; rather, they can be become motivated and active simply by exploring those topics of interest to them. In a world where global issues impact on young people in all countries, forcing them to reconsider the validity and usefulness of their national political institutions, it is important to explore other ways in which youth might become capable and active citizens in their local communities. Global Connects is presented as an example of the movement towards global understandings of citizenship and education that reflects these new understandings. Of course, these new conceptions of global citizenship are not without their problems. More recent scholars (Pais and Costa 2017) have highlighted the apparent contradiction between neoliberal global education policies and the emphasis on human rights and critical democracy. Catherine Hartung (2017) has also explored what kind of citizen is the preferred global citizen; she concludes that there is a strong element of entrepreneurialism involved. There is also concern that such an approach to citizenship education may limit the opportunities for transformative practice as well as being unnecessarily homogenising (Bamber et al. 2017). The domain of global citizenship education is one that remains contested as it continues to evolve.

5.2 Reconciliation Education Another model of education that has been developed, especially in Australia, is termed ‘reconciliation pedagogy’. This approach to education, which has been implemented in tertiary education, schools and communities, is an attempt to apply the ideas of consciousness raising to the troubled history of Australia’s colonial past, a history that is, for the most part, glossed over in schools. According to Rigney et al. (2003), reconciliation pedagogy’s purpose is ‘to deepen the understanding of the role education plays within the colonisation of Indigenous Australia through analysis of the principles of social justice’ (p. 137).

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Much of this work is based on the Education for Social Justice Research Group, and in particular the text, Teaching for Resistance by Rigney et al. (1994). This text advised readers how they might develop and research a model for teaching which engaged participants in the struggle for social justice in education and society. The utilisation of a Gramscian approach to resistance informed the project team as it sought to actively engage participants as ‘agents of struggle’ against injustice. (Rigney et al. 2003, p. 136)

Rigney et al. (2003) identified the need to teach people to name the social justice issues in their lives, before explaining the process by which they might tackle these injustices. The process by which this, and also Reconciliation Pedagogy, would take place is, despite the reference to Gramsci, one that would be instantly recognised by scholars of Freire. In addition, and echoing the recommendations of the earlier sections about school–community partnerships, Rigney et al. envision a teaching and learning continuum that extends beyond the school fences. Rather, they argue that there is a need to form alliances with other social and political movements. The purpose of this alliance building is to confront inequalities at their structural and cultural sources. Within the education system, we need to identify and work to change the structures and ideologies which create unequal educational outcomes in education now, and which will inhibit the role that schools might play in the broader political struggle. (p. 137)

Rigney et al. (2003) mostly focused their research on the experiences of pre-service teachers, which is eminently sensible. By changing the ways that teachers understand complex notions of race and power, and their own roles in maintaining or changing the status quo, there is the potential to make significant long-term changes to the way race, identity and reconciliation are taught in Australia’s schools. There are, however, other examples of reconciliation pedagogy that take a more short-term approach, and are in effect across Australia today. One such example is The Torch Project.

5.3 The Torch Project Since 1999 The Torch Project has been working in various settings including schools and prisons amongst Victorian communities. This project takes a community cultural development model to challenge people’s notions about challenging issues like racism, alcoholism, violence and drug abuse. Although it does not explicitly state that it draws on the ideas of Reconciliation Pedagogy (and nor is it work confined solely to questions related to Indigenous Australians), it shares many of the principles that I have outlined above. According to Stephen Payne (2004), then the Executive Officer of The Torch Project, Re-Igniting Community is the main activity of The Torch Project. Over the past six years it has evolved as a community cultural development model that uses the arts to mobilise communities around issues that fall into the ‘too hard basket’; including racism, substance abuse, family violence and disability. These issues are addressed in an on-going inclusive

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process using community consultation, workshops, activity in schools, theatrical and artistic expression, and ongoing community development activities driven by the local communities and involving hundreds of volunteers. (p. 94)

The Torch Project has, in the past, worked with both schools and the wider community; this is unlike other programs which create an arbitrary divide between schools and communities. It deliberately tries to link the two in a holistic attempt to change both. This attempt is linked to reconciliation pedagogy (and, more broadly, Freirean and Critical Pedagogies). As part of the Community Cultural Development work, participants are encouraged to see that they have the potential to add value to their community; that is, they can change the issues that are taking place in there. As well, The Torch Project is very clear about the community causes of such issues: rather than blaming individuals for alcoholism, for example, The Torch Project recognises the role that society plays in these illnesses and works towards finding communitybased solutions. In this way, it is following the principles of Reconciliation Pedagogy: participants are unmasking power, language, culture and history (Rigney et al. 2003).

5.4 Relevance to Justice Citizens I drew on two main ideas from programs like The Torch Project when I was developing Justice Citizens. First, in the formulation of the pedagogical theory that underpinned Justice Citizens, one of the core goals for the program was to encourage young people to see how language, especially in the media, worked to shape their own understandings of identity and agency. In some respects, this is similar to Reconciliation Pedagogy’s efforts to unmask power in the construction of race in Australian Schools. Second, as in The Torch Project the use of community groups was central to Justice Citizens. My project was funded by a cultural development grant from the local council, and I used this money to involve local artists and film-makers, in much the same way that The Torch Project does. The emphasis here was on skill development and participation; that is, I wanted the films made with the participating students, not about them.

6 Social Media Campaigns and Civics and Citizenship Education One of the most recent developments related to civics and citizenship education (and, indeed, in all forms of education) is the role of social media. Although the educational use of social media is still a relatively new field, a number of researchers

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(for example, Hardey 2011) have been exploring how social media tools (and especially microblogging platforms like Twitter and Facebook) are being used to leverage interest amongst young people. Of course, such innovations have not been without criticism: the internet and social media has been blamed for cyberbullying, increases in teenage promiscuity and shortening attention spans of teenagers—all without a great deal of evidence (for more on this, see boyd 2014). David Gauntlett (2015) has written about the way that the internet and social media have a liberatory potential, and he refutes the arguments of such critics: ‘These writers suggest that the shift where citizens become media creators rather than mere consumers is a waste of time – which I find rather shocking’ (p. 2). Crucially for Justice Citizens and other examples of Justice Pedagogy, Gauntlett argues that the internet encourages a sense of collective engagement that was previously hindered by individualism. He cites the work of Daniel Miller (2012), for whom networks like Facebook have similarities to older traditions of societal relations, like kinship groups. Supporting this is the notion of the internet being one of the last commons; that is, something held in trust for all people. James Arvanitakis (2006) has explained the importance of the commons: ‘[It] is the social and political space where things get done and where people find belonging and an element of control over their lives’ (p. 3). This is in opposition to academics like Lanier (2010) who suggests that the internet is like a bazaar, where hundreds of providers sell their products or services directly to consumers, without the need for an intervening company. The reality is that most things on social media and the internet exist on a continuum between open (and free) and closed (and paid). What does this mean for civics and citizenship education? Fortunately, many of the debates and discussions relevant to it take place in the commons areas of the internet. An individual who is capable of accessing the internet is also capable of engaging with the people and institutions of their democracy. Indeed, this is precisely the mechanism upon which citizen journalism is built. According to Gauntlett (2015), is not important that the people engaging in this way are not professional politicians or journalists: ‘The ocean of independent amateur activity is where the interesting and powerful stuff is to be found’ (p. 6). Ivan Illich (1973) argued that it is part of human need to shape our own environment. People are engaging with this much more fully now because of the spaces that the internet and social media provide. Although some scholars (for example, Fuchs 2009) have suggested that this is a form of exploitation, Gauntlett rejects this idea. I agree with Gauntlett and feel that we are seeing what is a natural desire of humans to act upon their environment. To use Freire’s (1974, 1970) terminology, we are seeing people desiring to be subjects rather than objects. Gauntlett (2011) suggests that using social media in this way is part of our resistance to being positioned as a consumer. Gauntlett’s final piece of advice is that ‘the digital internet is good, but hands on physical things are good, too’ (2015, p. 19). In other words, the best of the web is when it is connected to physical things. He suggests that the people who gain the most from the internet are those

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who like to do ‘real world’ things, but whose activity has been given a substantial boost by the opportunity to connect, organise, share ideas and inspire each other online. (2015, p. 12)

These notions of the commons have influenced the development of a number of civics and citizenship education (CCE) programs, including Justice Citizens. In particular, when designing Justice Citizens I felt that any program of CCE should ensure that students were positioned as creators, not consumers of the media, and this led to the emphasis on making films. The notions of film and media literacy are discussed later in this book. Meanwhile it is worth examining an example of a CCE program that has capitalised on social media more closely, the Aussie Democrazy project.

6.1 Aussie Democrazy The Aussie Democrazy project, which began just before the Australian federal election in 2010, is interesting for two reasons. First, it took place as part of a formal Civics class in a Victorian school. Second, it made explicit use of social media as a means to build engagement amongst students and involve them in the actual election as active participants rather than disinterested bystanders. In many ways, it meets the criteria set out by Gauntlett (2015) as an example of connecting to physical things. The Aussie Democrazy project was the idea of Mike Stuchbery, a teacher in a Victorian high school. He was conscious that despite the looming 2010 federal election, students were, for the most part, apathetic about the election and the issues related to parliament and government. Instead of teaching them in the usual way (a minimalist approach) by using textbooks and the Discovering Democracy syllabus and resources, Stuchbery attempted to teach the students about Federal Parliament by actually involving them in the election campaign—as political commentators, reporters and journalists. He describes the change that this caused in the classroom: As I move around the room, showing them the Twitter account I’ve set up for them, the blog and a few other gadgets I’ve picked up, they get it. They sit down in groups, working on questions that they want to direct at politicians. They’re good questions too. There are ones on trade alliances, school funding and the pressures of public scrutiny. Truth be told, I’m kind of gobsmacked. One kid asks me whether he and his mate can call a TV station, that they reckon they might be able to get Julia or Tony if someone reported on what we’re doing. I nod, smile, and send them off to write a script for the phone call they’ll make. There’s electricity in the air. It doesn’t feel like school. It feels like something else. The kids are alert, focused, loving what they’re doing. (Stuchbery 2010)

By making the lessons about civics and citizenship education much more real and maximal, Stuchbery managed to tap into the interests of young people. As Gauntlett (2015) recommends, he was linking the digital world to the real world. It is important to remember that young people have as much right to ask questions of the politicians as anybody else. Indeed, as much as Aussie Democrazy might have been about civics and citizenship education, it was also about young people learning that it is essential for members of a democracy to challenge their leaders, to ask difficult questions and

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to demand transparency. These are the kinds of attitudes that are often overlooked in a minimal approach, but they were firmly foregrounded in Aussie Democrazy. Another important point relates to the way Stuchbery encouraged his students’ participation through the use of social media. Websites, Twitter and Facebook accounts were all leveraged to ensure that students could engage in the most efficient way with politicians, journalists and other relevant individuals. This is important for two reasons; first, the use of social media in this way is still a relatively new phenomenon, and second, it allows for engagement at a much closer and more immediate level. In particular, many politicians have taken to engaging with members of the Australian public on a regular, daily level through Twitter. For example, as of 2016, more than 140 federal politicians have Twitter accounts. Compared to the traditional methods of letter writing or telephoning, Twitter adds a level of immediacy to the discussion and the debate; it is now possible for school students to have an instantaneous conversation with a person of some importance. In addition to immediacy, there is also a higher level of visibility of these conversations than with previous forms of communication. This ensures that there is more chance for transparency and encourages more robust debate. For example, a question tweeted by a student from the Aussie Democrazy class to a politician about national debt or something similar might have been retweeted hundreds of times by like-minded people—or by people who simply thought it was a good question for a politician to answer. These ‘retweets’ act as a kind of echo chamber, with more and more people on Twitter being exposed to the question and passing it onto their followers, or adding questions of their own. Thus, a ‘conversation’ can form that is moderated and curated by the Twitter public. From the perspective of civics and citizenship education, Twitter is a far more egalitarian way to approach debate and discussion than through the mainstream media. While I acknowledge that there are inherent risks in using social media, I feel that the potential benefits outweigh these risks. The students in Justice Citizens made films about issues that they felt were important, and they then shared those films with a wide audience via YouTube. This meant that their potential audience was much wider than just the attendees at the students’ film festival. Not surprisingly, this increased exposure had powerful effects. The real-world nature of the program (or in Gauntlett’s terms, the fact that the internet part was connected to the physical act of making a film and investigating a local issue) meant that the students were more intensely engaged in the film-making processes. This increased exposure also meant that students were not isolated; they had opportunities to not only look at similar projects, but also respond to the questions about Justice Citizens they received from people around the country and the world. This chapter has presented a range of alternative examples of civics and citizenship education programs. This has included social justice education, school–community partnerships, reconciliation education, participatory action research and the role of the internet and social media. I have explained how these alternative approaches have influenced the development of Justice Citizens. In the following chapter, I am going to discuss some of the contesting theories of civics and citizenship, and civics

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and citizenship education, and how those different approaches engage with the ideas presented in the first section of this book, and also how they informed the development of Justice Pedagogy.

Research Portrait Six: Interview with Talent Everything that we had done thus far in Justice Citizens had been centred around the students: What were their interests? What did they think was important? After the challenge of the lesson where our conversations had moved on to other topics like ‘boat people’ and my students had admitted to never having met someone who identified as a refugee, I realised that we had come to a critical juncture in the progam. It seemed a good time to involve the refugee community in some meaningful way. I had two ideas about how to do this. First, I knew that Mamre Homestead, a charity in the local area, did a lot of work with Sudanese refugees, especially women’s groups. I spoke to Sister Mary-Louise, the head of its education programs, and invited her to speak to the class. We talked about whether she might bring some of the Sudanese women, but Sister Mary-Louise decided against it, as they would be too shy to speak to a classroom full of students. I knew how passionately Sister Mary-Louise would speak about the vital work she was doing, and I was confident she could explain the challenges faced by Sudanese refugees now living in Australia. It was my hope that this approach would challenge some of the dominant conceptions held by my students about refugees. While these were my hopes, the reality was somewhat different. The day of the presentation was very hot; we were in one of the old classrooms, without airconditioning, and the students were sweltering before we even started. Sister Mary Louise spoke about the journey to Australia by a refugee she worked with, about her escape from Sudan and the dangers she faced. It was a gripping story, but as I looked around at the students I realised that most of the students were listening to it but not comprehending it. This was evident when Sister Mary Louise asked for questions. Everyone was silent. I tried to prompt the students, but their responses were desultory. After Sister Mary Louise finished I felt the need to apologise to her; I could see that she was a bit disconcerted by the whole process too. She suggested that perhaps these students were too young and immature to understand. At this point, I began to theorise about young people’s civic involvement—at what point is it at its highest? Perhaps students were simply not interested as they felt that they were too far from being able to do anything—like voting. Had I been trying too hard to push the students in the direction I wanted them to go? At the next Justice Citizens lesson I asked them what they thought of Sister MaryLouise’s presentation. After the usual grumbles and comments, I said, ‘Enough. I’m not angry. This is different. I’m interested. I could tell that most of you weren’t really interested. Am I right?’

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There were a few nods around the room, Once again, I was conscious that this was getting a little bit uncomfortable for the students. I was pushing them out of their comfort zone again. ‘So,’ I continued, ‘Here’s your chance to tell me. Why weren’t you interested?’ Silence. I’d learned a trick, by now. If I waited long enough, holding eye contact with the class, eventually someone would say something. This time it was Tuesday, a girl who hadn’t participated much in our lessons so far. ‘It’s like this, sir’, she began. ‘I know that what happened to those people she was talking about is bad … it’s just … I don’t really care about something that happened so far away.’ Tuesday paused here, but the nods and mumblings of agreement seemed to spur her on. ‘We live in Penrith, right, in Australia. And all we hear about are all the problems happening everywhere else in the world. Well, what about the problems happening right here in Penrith? I’ve got friends who can’t afford petrol for their car, sir. It’s not as bad as getting killed, but it’s something I understand, you know?’ I nodded and thanked Tuesday for her honesty. She looked nervous. I asked the class if others agreed with Tuesday. Who else felt there were more problems around Penrith? More than half the class put up their hands. I asked them what were some of the issues, and was inundated by their responses. Things that I had been looking for in previous lessons suddenly started showing up: domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse, social media, road safety, bullying, crime, teenage pregnancies and so on. In the space of 10 minutes, I had 20 topics on the board. This was a really important point in the whole Justice Citizens project. For the first time, the students were beginning to direct their own learning. They had rejected an idea I had given them as being too divorced from their own context, and were instead suggesting alternatives. This interlude reinforced to me the importance of context: critical pedagogy should be rooted in the experiences of the student, something I departed from with Sister Mary-Louise’s presentation. As a side note, a couple of students still wanted to find out more about refugees. But again, the context was crucial; they wanted to talk to refugees about what it was like living in Australia, in Penrith. My second idea about refugees was more of a long shot. I was receiving some funding through Penrith City Council, and their community cultural development officer had put me in touch with a young man called Yadav Timsina, a Bhutanese refugee studying to be a nurse at a nearby further education college. He agreed to be interviewed on camera by a delegation of my students. I knew which students I wanted to take with me: Emmalee, who had asked me the question about refugees the previous lesson, and her friend Liz. They agreed and we met Yadav at his college’s library after school. Emmalee, Liz and I had gone through a couple of basic filming techniques, and I had asked them to construct some questions without my help. I wanted them to take the interview in the direction they wanted. As we waited for Yadav in the library, Liz and Emmalee nervously paced the room. They were out of their comfort zone; neither had been to this college before and dressed in their school uniforms they looked out of place amongst its older students. Yadav arrived and was eager to help, but he was nervous too. He said he was worried about what he might be asked, and how well he could answer. I looked

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at Emmalee and made an ‘over to you’ gesture. She smiled, giggled apprehensively, and switched on the camera. The next 45 minutes were surprising. From the moment she turned on the camera Emmalee assumed a totally new demeanour. Gone was the shy school student, and instead here was a determined neophyte journalist. In our conversations in previous lessons Emmalee had agreed with many of the comments about asylum seekers being dangerous to the Australian way of life. Not surprisingly, she and Liz led off in that direction, asking why Yadav had felt the need to flee Bhutan. As Yadav laid out the details of his life—fleeing the country one night, spending the next 12 years in Nepal in a refugee camp, and then finally being resettled in Australia without his brothers and sisters—I could see Emmalee’s and Liz’s ideas about refugees changing. They had probably never met anyone who had been through such upheaval, and to hear it from someone who lived near them and was only a few years older than they were made the interview process even more powerful. The most telling section of the conversation, though, happened towards the end when Liz and Emmalee asked Yadav about his experiences in Australia. Yadav started off by saying everyone had been friendly to him, but Emmalee changed tack and asked whether he had ever experienced racism. After pausing, he said that sometimes on the train he gets called things like ‘dirty Indian’, even though he is Bhutanese. When Emmalee asked how that made him feel, he responded that he felt pretty bad.

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Minkler, M. (2000). Using participatory action research to build healthy communities. Public Health Reports (Washington, D.C. : 1974), 115(2–3), 191–197. O’Loughlin, M. (1997). Education for citizenship: Integrating knowledge, imagination, and democratic dispositions. Forum of Education, 52(2), 24–33. Pais, A., & Costa, M. (2017). An ideology critique of global citizenship education. Critical Studies in Education, 61, 1–16. Payne, S. (2004, November). Report from the fourth pillar conference. Melbourne. Pleyers, G. (2005). Young people and alter-globalisation: From disillusionment to a new culture of politilcal participation. In J. Forbrig (Ed.), Revisiting youth political participation: Challenges for research and democratic practice in Europe (pp. 133–44). Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Powers, C. B., & Allaman, E. (2012). How participatory action research can promote social change and help youth development. The kinder & braver world project: Research series. Putnam, R. D. (2001). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York: Simon and Schuster. Rigney, D., Rigney, L., & Tur, S. U. (2003, September). Training teachers for reconciliation: A work in progress. A paper presented at the Australian Curriculum Studies Association Conference, Melbourne. Schensul, J., & Berg, M. (2004). Youth participatory action research: A transformative approach to service-learning. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 10(3, Summer), 76–88. Schorr, L. B. (1997). Common purposes: Strengthening families and neighborhoods to rebuild America. New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday. Schultz, L., Guevara, J. R., Ratnam, S., Wyn, J., & Sowerby, C. (2009). Global connections: A tool for active citizenship. Development in Practice, 19(8), 1023–1034. Stokes, H., & Turnbull, M. (2009). Reimagining learning for the foundation for young Australians. Australian Youth Research Centre. Stuchbery, M. (2010, September 28). Learning to teach social media. Retrieved from http://www. abc.net.au/news/2010–08-03/35652. Westheimer, J., & Kahne, J. (2004b). Educating the “good” citizen: Political choices and pedagogical goals. PS: Political Science and Politics, 37(2), 241–247. Wheeler, L., Lang, J., Gow, B., Guevara. J., & Smith, J. (2014). Conversations in school: Community learning partnerships for sustainability. In I. Bartkowiak-Theron & K. Anderson (Eds.), Knowledge in action: University-community engagement in Australia (pp. 183–206). Newscastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Wyness, M. (2006). Childhood and society: Introduction to the sociology of childhood. London: Palgrave. Zyngier, D. (2007). Education through elegant subversion. Professional Voice, 6(3), 51–56. Zyngier, D. (2011). Raising engagement and enhancing learning: School community partnerships that work for students at promise. Creative Education, 2(4), 375–380.

Chapter 8

A New Understanding of Civic Participation: Citizens in Action or Citizens in Waiting?

Abstract The central point of this chapter will be the apparent lack of understanding about young people’s conceptions of active citizenship (although, of course, I will acknowledge that academics such as David Zyngier have been arguing against this for a long time). This lack of understanding has led to young people being mischaracterised as easily led, or as apathetic or as selfish. There is some clarification needed here: I’m not arguing that these traits don’t necessarily exist, but it seems unfair to say they exist amongst all young people. Rather, there is a need for a more nuanced understanding of what it means to be a young person in Australia in the twenty-first century. This will lead to a discussion of what level of activism is acceptable amongst young people. Curriculum often constructs young people as ‘citizens in waiting’—that is, they are passively storing up knowledge in order to act later (if at all). This chapter argues that this is an outmoded notion—young people have tools (see Chapter 4) that enable them to organise and act much more effectively—or at least with wider reach than ever before. I will conclude this chapter by suggesting that we should begin with the students at the heart of the discussions of civics and citizenship education—what are they doing, what are they thinking about, how do they consider themselves ‘active’ or not, and construct our approach to citizenship education around these ideas.

1 Introduction In Section 1 (Chapters 1–3), I outlined three ways that young people are engaging with civil society in fundamentally different ways to the past. I explained the increase in civil action, the way young people are often involved in leading these actions, despite much discussion about their disinterest or apathy, and the way that these new civil actions are often mediated through the use of social media. In Section 2 (Chapters 4–6), I examined historic, current and emerging models of civics and citizenship education, with a particular focus on the Australian context. I described how citizenship has a long history, both in Australia and overseas, and how the notion of what is meant by citizenship has developed from a nationalistic to a more © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Heggart, Activist Citizenship Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4694-9_8

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complex understanding, while at the same time the notion of who is considered to be a citizen has gradually developed in line with the increasing freedoms afforded to different groups within society. In addition, I examined why formal government-led initiatives have failed to engender active citizenship amongst young people, despite the high quality of the curriculum being offered, and reflected upon the failure of the Australian curriculum to remedy this omission. Finally, I have examined a number of alternative civics and citizenship education programs that might suggest possible ways forward. In this section, I begin by examining theoretical underpinnings of civics and citizenship education, and especially how they might intersect with the features of young people’s engagement with the civic sphere. This will provide the foundation for my explication of Justice Citizens, a program of study aimed at developing justice-oriented citizens through Justice Pedagogy.

2 A Contested Field There are few Western governments that do not explicitly acknowledge the importance of civics and citizenship education to the health of their democracies (Kerr 1999). However, what should be included in this civics and citizenship education is contested in many of these countries (Abowitz and Harnish 2006). The purpose of this chapter is to describe some of the main approaches to civics and citizenship education, including maximal citizenship education, justice-oriented citizenship education and multi-dimensional citizenship education. In doing so, I will begin to develop the themes that have influenced the development of Justice Pedagogy, which will be discussed later. In addition to the contestations about what should be included in any formal curriculum for civics and citizenship education and how this curriculum should be delivered, there is also discussion about whether human rights education and global education are forms of citizenship education. For example, one might rightly question whether democratic education is a subset of civics education, or whether they can exist side by side. Other links have been explored between civics and citizenship education and human rights education. Sev Ozdowski (2015), for example, argues that, rather than civics and citizenship education, which is often considered to have a national focus, there should be more of an emphasis placed on human rights education (Davies et al. 2005). Finally, there is also discussion about the place of civic and citizenship education within the curriculum (Alderson 1999): Should it be taught as a single subject; be integrated across a wide variety of subjects; or be limited to extracurricular or ‘special events’ days?

3 What Is a Citizen? The nature of civics and citizenship education and what it entails are necessarily influenced by the definition of citizenship within a particular national context. Although

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this too is a complex discussion, and has changed over time (see Chapter 5), I will briefly discuss some of the main theories of citizenship as they apply to this book. Generally speaking, a citizen is a member of a political community, with its attendant rights and obligations. However, the influence of feminist thought, the diversity between different liberal democratic states, and the unfolding influence of globalisation have all meant that discussions about what constitutes citizenship continue to be relevant today. According to Ambrose (in Zbar 2008), the first conception of citizenship is a classical one. In ancient Athens, a citizen was conceived as a free man, as opposed to slaves, women and children who participated in their own government. Pericles, the Athenian statesman, described their government in this way: Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. We do not copy our neighbors, but are an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. (Thucydides et al. 1972, p. 231).

This classical conception of citizenship is often described as the republican model, and is embodied in the idea of civic self-rule, as described both by Aristotle et al. (1995) and Rousseau (1762). This model has features that we would recognise in liberal democracies today: voting, rotation of offices, the co-authoring of laws. In this classical conception of citizenship, the emphasis is placed more on a participatory, as opposed to merely representative, forms of citizenship, where each citizen is able, and indeed, obligated to, participate in governing. In today’s democracies, the public imagination is more easily captured by representative rather than participatory forms of democracy. While value is still placed on volunteering, protesting and public debate, there is much work required to strengthen active participation. In contrast to the republican model, Walzer (1989) describes the liberal model of citizenship, which takes on a legal, rather than political meaning. In this case, citizenship is about being subject to and protected by the laws of the state. It does not connote any participation in the development of those laws. At the heart of the liberal model is the notion of individual liberty—but it is a liberty that is exercised in the private sphere, rather than in the political one. This form of citizenship grew out of the rise of nation states during the Enlightenment, and identified that within these nations there has always been a tension between the rights of citizens to act as autonomous individuals and the requirement of the state to ensure all citizens are treated equally. This conception of citizenship gave rise to the development of representative government, at least in a form that is still recognisable today, where the responsibilities of a citizen are limited to participating in elections, rather than in the actual crafting of laws and policies. Both liberal and republican approaches to citizenship have been criticised by feminist scholars like Okin (1992), who have argued that the division of a private and public sphere is both oppressive and arbitrary. Okin (1992) argues that this requires a reconception of what it means to be a citizen, and also how citizens must work together in order to construct laws that take into account personal circumstances, but also realise that some problems require the collective action of the state to solve.

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Recent Western democracies have also been forced to face that their efforts to afford the same civil, political and social rights to all citizens have not necessarily led to equality. This universalist approach to citizenship, as most famously described by Marshall (1950) was critiqued by race and gender scholars (Young 1989; Williams 1998) who argued that this universal model was exclusionary, and instead proposed a more pluralistic approach to citizenship, centred on the recognition of difference— although that too has been criticised as working against the unity of the state (Barry 2001). Globalisation is also beginning to challenge previous notions of citizenship. In particular, the migration of large numbers of people has meant that there are often citizens and non-citizens living together in large numbers in one country, and this has led some scholars like Bauböck (1994) to consider what rights should be afforded to non-citizens in these instances. A further development is to question whether a liberal democratic state is required for citizenship—or if there might be such a thing as a trans-citizen? These conceptions of citizenship help to explore the way education systems have attempted to implement civics and citizenship education. In Australia, the Howard government from 1996 to 2007, adapting Discovering Democracy to suit its purpose, embraced a conception of citizenship that would align more closely with republican conceptions of citizenship. Discovering Democracy (at the level of implementation, if not rhetoric) aimed to teach students their rights and their responsibilities, with much of that focus on understanding how they would vote for representatives in the various levels of government, and what the roles of those representatives were.

4 Contesting Views About What Should Be Included in the Civics and Citizenship Education Curriculum In the following sections I will discuss contesting views about what should be included in the curriculum of civics and citizenship education. This debate centres on understandings of what citizenship means, and I will present the arguments about private versus public ideals of citizenship, and also those discussing whether civics and citizenship educations should encourage activism or obedience.

4.1 Education for Public Versus Private Citizenship One of the criticisms of many models of civics and citizenship education is that they do not address the values a citizen might need on a personal or private level. O’Loughlin (1997), in particular, identified this as a weakness in Discovering Democracy. Whether this is a valid point hinges upon the definition of a citizen; if a citizen can only be constructed socially, then it is fair that the curriculum should address only

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public and social values, attitudes and knowledges. By contrast, if a citizen can exist apart from society, then there is a need to address more private, personal values. This criticism is linked to another issue related to definitions of ‘public’; traditionally, men dominated the ‘public’ role of the citizen, and this suggests that the qualities desirable in a citizen are only those possessed by men. These debates between those who advocate either public or private models of citizenship have played out in educational spaces in regard to what should be taught in the citizenship curriculum (Carolissen 2014). Making this point, Schugurensky and Myers argue that new conceptions of citizenship must embrace both private and public domains: The twentieth century conceptualization of citizenship has been focused primarily on the public sphere. By framing a universal concept of citizenship constructed on the attributes, identities and practices of male subjects, gendered relations and the private sphere have been neglected. (2003, p. 4)

This is another challenge within this field; any new approach to civics and citizenship education must address the sexist nature of previous curricula.

4.2 Activist Citizenship Education: Encouraging Dissent or Obedience? According to Westheimer and Kahne, ‘democracy in the US has been predicated on citizens’ informed engagement in civic and political life’ (2003, p. 9). They acknowledge the importance of civics and citizenship education to the US, citing Thomas Jefferson: I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion. (Thomas Jefferson, in Westheimer and Kahne 2003, p. 9)

However, educators can’t seem to agree on what educating democratic citizens might actually mean. For example, Westheimer and Kahne (2003) quote the former US Secretary of Education, William Bennett, who stated that the purpose of civics education was to point students in the direction of ‘what is good and true’ (p. 10). Of course, such a moralistic point of view cannot fully account for the myriad of competing discourses, values and ideologies present in modern American society. By contrast, Westheimer and Kahne cite a Carnegie Mellon University report which states that civics and citizenship education could be a tool to ‘explore difficult and unresolved issues in politics’ (p. 10). This suggests another question for civics and citizenship educators: Is the purpose of such a curriculum to mould young people into some previously described notion of a ‘good’ citizen, or is it to encourage young people to more fully develop into citizens capable of questioning their governments and societies, identifying injustice and working to make their communities more equitable? The two concepts are not mutually exclusive; It is possible for citizens to question

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their government and still be considered ‘good citizens’, at least in some contexts. Cogan and Morris (2001) have identified that in some countries (like Australia), there is more support for young people engaging in civil disobedience campaigns and still being considered as a ‘good citizen’, whereas in countries like South Korea, obedience is much more highly prized. While it might be more highly prized in South Korea, I think that Cogan and Morris have been too quick to generalise here; South Korea has a long history of civil disobedience and mass protests against authoritarian regimes that have ruled the country in the past (De Groot 2014).

4.3 Should Citizenship Be Taught Discretely or Embedded Across the Curriculum? There is also the question of whether citizenship should be embedded or taught separately. In England, for example, the Crick Report (Department for Education and Employment/Qualifications and Curriculum Authority [DfEE/QCA] 1999) stated that citizenship was far too important to be integrated into other subjects, which meant that a new subject called ‘Citizenship’ (interestingly, in England, the term civics was omitted, which is often used synonymously with citizenship) was created and made compulsory through primary and junior secondary school. In South Korea, civics and citizenship is taught explicitly throughout the school years. In Australia, however, civics and citizenship is a much more complicated issue. Despite federal oversight and increasing accountability, education remains the purview of state governments, each of which undertakes its own approach to the teaching of civics and citizenship education. In NSW, for example, it is taught as part of the key learning area Human Society and Its Environment (HSIE), usually integrated with History and Geography, but in Victoria and a number of other states, it exists as a separate subject called ‘Civics’. The formal structures insisted upon by the various state education departments disguise an element of civics and citizenship education that is often overlooked, however. This is the part that takes place in the ‘embedded curriculum’ (Apple 2004, p. 54). Although not often explicit in a school’s curricula, students learn about their role as citizens through the kinds of activities that interrupt or otherwise punctuate a school’s calendar. An example, in Australia is Anzac Day (25 April), which commemorates the war service of the Australian and New Zealand military personnel since World War 1. Though a public holiday, Anzac Day is usually commemorated at schools, often with an accompanying service if the school is a religious one. Events like this serve to teach students about what is regarded as important and acceptable in society. They contribute to constructing a national identity, and thus contribute to the notions of belonging. Julie Matthews and Ravinder Sidhu (2005), for example, have explored how school ceremonies like Anzac Day are exclusionary, privileging notions of identity based on white heterosexual and male power, alongside narratives of invasion, violence and colonisation.

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5 McLaughlin’s Continuum of Maximal and Minimal Citizenship Education One of the most important explorations of civics and citizenship education is the work of British scholar, philosopher and moral educator, Terence McLaughlin. McLaughlin (1992) acknowledged that, while civics and citizenship, and education for them, may be contested and challenging, all notions of citizenship can be mapped out against a continuum stretching from minimal forms to maximal forms. Civics and citizenship education can be placed on a similar continuum. McLaughlin identified four main features of this citizenship continuum (Fig. 1). The first is the varying interpretations of the identity of the individual citizen in relation to the state. In minimal forms, a citizen is defined in very limited ways: formal, legal and juridicial. By contrast, a maximal definition defines the citizen in more broadly, taking into account things like social, psychological and cultural notions of citizenship. The second feature is that of the virtues required by the citizen. At a minimal level, these are limited and localised; for example, a citizen might only be expected to vote, obey the law and pay taxes. At a maximal level, a citizen might be expected to act in a much more empowered way, including having a responsibility to challenge, question and protest against the government. The third feature is that of the expected political involvement by an individual. At a minimal level, there is suspicion of too much involvement, and so political involvement might be limited to voting during elections. Maximally, there would be more emphasis on a fully participatory democracy.

Fig. 1 McLaughlin’s citizenship continuum

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The fourth feature is the social prerequisites expected of citizens. A minimal interpretation would be limited to a legal understanding of citizens and citizenship, while a maximal interpretation would have citizens recognising and challenging specific social disadvantages. Having defined this continuum and the specific features it impacts upon, McLaughlin (1992) suggested that it should not be viewed as a fixed schedule; most conceptions of citizenship could be placed at some point along the axis between minimal and maximal, and would not likely exist just at either end of it. However, McLaughlin did identify what he considered to be the most salient question to consider: what degree of critical understanding and questioning was considered necessary for a citizen? The notion of a continuum between maximal and minimal also applies to civics and citizenships education. McLaughlin’s (1992) main criticism of minimal forms of citizenship education is that it may lead to ‘an unreflective socialisation into the political and social status quo’ (1992, p. 238) because its main aim is the provision of information and development of local virtues. There is nothing in interpretations of this kind which require the development in students of a broad critical reflection and understanding … Nor is there concern to ameliorate the social disadvantages that may inhibit the students form developing into citizens in a significant sense. (pp. 237–238)

By contrast, a maximal approach to civics and citizenship education is much more egalitarian; it actively seeks to develop amongst young people both the knowledges and the skills required to be citizens in a more complete sense, which includes a critical awareness of the way political ideologies can shape their lives. However, McLaughlin pointed out some of the challenges with approaching citizenship education this way. Citizenship education, for the most part, is linked to the notion of ‘public virtues’, which are contextual to particular societies. These shared public virtues can be difficult to identify, and even more challenging to develop, in a society based on liberalism and tolerance of diversity, practice and values. The tension facing maximal citizenship educators is to find a balance between the critical reasoning and independent judgement required of citizens and the shared values, loyalty and commitments necessary in a cohesive society. David Kerr has built upon McLaughlin’s work, and been even more explicit about the differences between minimal and maximal citizenship education. According to Kerr (1999), minimal citizenship education can be described as exclusive, elitist, civics based, formal, content driven, knowledge based, didactic and easier to achieve. [Minimal interpretations] seek to promote particular exclusive and elitist interests, such as the granting of citizenship to certain groups in society but not all. Minimal interpretations lead to narrow, formal approaches to citizenship education – what has been termed civics education. (p. 11)

By contrast, maximal forms of citizenship education are inclusive, activist, citizenship based, participatory, process driven, values based, interactive and far more challenging for educators to implement. This analysis throws up some interesting points; the first is made by Kerr himself, who identified that citizenship education

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Fig. 2 Minimal vs maximal approaches to citizenship education

can often be described as ‘education about citizenship, education through citizenship and education for citizenship’ (1999, p. 12). This reinforces the notion that various interpretations within civics and citizenship education that can be applied. According to Kerr (1999) (Fig. 2), [Maximal interpretations] seek to actively include and involve all groups and interests in society. Maximal interpretations lead to a broad mixture of formal and informal approaches to what has been termed citizenship education, as opposed to narrower civics education. This citizenship education includes the content and knowledge components of minimal interpretations, but actively encourages investigation and interpretation of the many different ways in which these components (including the rights and responsibilities of citizens) are determined and carried out. (p. 11)

Other researchers who have explored what is meant by the terms ‘maximal’ and ‘minimal’ are Cogan and Morris (2001), who developed a model of citizenship (multi-dimensional citizenship) that I explore in the next section. They also analysed civics and citizenship education within schools, rather than at a systemic or national level, and found McLaughlin’s work useful for interpreting the different approaches within schools. They write (of minimal approaches) (Fig. 3), This is largely content-led and knowledge based. It is centred on formal education programs that concentrate on the transmission to students of knowledge of a country’s history and geography, of the structure and processes of its system of government, and of its constitution … On the other hand, maximal approaches are very different: as the outcomes of maximal approaches are broad, involving the acquisition of knowledge and understanding, and the development of values and dispositions, and skills and attitudes, it is much more difficult to measure how successfully these outcomes have been achieved. (2001, p. 120)

Again, it would be wise not to try to bracket a particular example of citizenship education as either maximal or minimal; rather it would exist at some point on a continuum. For example, Discovering Democracy, in both theory and practice, would be closer to the minimal end of the continuum. As already discussed, the

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Fig. 3 Cogan and Morris’ conception of maximal vs minimal citizenship education

emphasis in Discovering Democracy was on the development of an understanding of the history, formal institutions and mechanisms of Australian democracy. This narrow approach is consistent with the minimal approach to civics and citizenship education. Discovering Democracy (speaking generally of course, in the way that it was taught in most classrooms) took place in a formal sense and was limited to set classes of civics or Australian History and Geography. The emphasis in Discovering Democracy was on a teacher-led curriculum, with teachers in the classroom enabled by the curriculum as the gatekeepers of civics knowledge, tasked with the duty of passing it on to the students in their charge. There were limited opportunities for student participation, and what participation there was, was based on teacher-constructed activities taken from the Discovering Democracy curriculum. By comparison, some of the other examples of civics and citizenship education discussed in Chapter 6 are more in keeping with the maximal approach. For example, the ruMAD? Jessie’s Creek project adopted a curriculum and pedagogical approach that is much more maximal in a number of important ways. In particular, the program was inclusive; not only were students from the local primary school involved in the whole project, but the whole project was focused on activism and social change, rather than storing up knowledge or developing an understanding of the formal democratic process. These sorts of discussions of maximal and minimal approaches are of value because they assist in identifying some of their main features, but ultimately they create an artificial divide in civics and citizenship education. By classifying different programs on a continuum between the two extremes, I believe we ignore the way that maximal and minimal approaches feed into each other. A more complete model would have a spiral instead of a continuum. The spiral best encapsulates the way that maximal and minimal approaches feed into and off each other. Unlike a continuum, which suggests an ever-widening separation between the two forms, a spiral allows for a kind of cross-pollination that I think better demonstrates the underlying structure of the way civics and citizenship education works.

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I would argue, based on my experiences with Justice Citizens, that a maximal approach to civics and citizenship education also encourages the development of minimal knowledges; that is, by focusing on activism and social change matters, students also have the benefit of developing a minimal knowledge about the way government and its institutions operate, although this takes place at a much different level than in strictly minimal approaches. One way of conceiving of this is that maximal approaches develop civic knowledge as a ‘just-in-time’ kind of knowledge, whereas minimal approaches develop that knowledge ‘just-in-case’.

6 Morris and Cogan’s Multi-dimensional Models of Civics and Citizenship Education Another way of exploring civics and citizenship education is to examine the way that civic values, as expressed within society, have developed over time. This is the approach taken by Cogan and colleagues, who attempted to identify a common core of civics and citizenship skills and attitudes as a means to providing a framework for civics and citizenship education. Cogan and Morris (2001) begin by theorising about what is meant by a ‘good citizen’. According to Cogan, this involves ‘developing a capacity for and commitment to a civic ethic characterized by socially responsible habits of mind, heart and action’ (2000, p. 22). Specifically, Cogan mentions a ‘willingness to protect the environment, to defend human rights, and to engage in public life’ (2000, p. 22). At a more general level, Cogan points to what he describes as socially responsible habits of mind, the ability to think critically, and skills including problem-solving and conflict resolution. The social dimension builds upon the personal dimension. Cogan (2000) expressed the idea that citizenship is a social activity, and young people need to develop the skills that allow them ‘to engage in public debate and discussion, to participate in public life, to deal with the problems and issues that face them’ (p. 23). He also identified that the political arena is only one part of the social dimension, and civics and citizenship education must encompass a range of other economic, cultural and social domains. The third dimension is spatial; ‘citizens must also see themselves as members of several overlapping communities: local, regional, national and multinational’ (p. 23). Cogan (2000) included this dimension because of the increasingly globalised nature of the world, where national boundaries are becoming blurred and communities are becoming more diverse and disparate. Associated with this are significant changes in technology, communications, trade patterns and immigration. Even so, he predicted people will still retain a strong sense of national identity: The challenges of the next century transcend national boundaries and will require multinational solutions. However, people’s sense of identity is and is likely to remain rooted in the local and the personal in terms of nation and culture. (p. 23)

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Cogan’s (2000) fourth dimension model is temporal, which means ‘that citizens, in dealing with contemporary challenges, cannot be so preoccupied with the present that they lose sight of the past and the future’ (p. 24). This is an interesting dimension to citizenship education and one that is, in my opinion, often overlooked. It also has links directly with notions of sustainability, which are becoming more prevalent in Australian schools’ curricula (ACARA 2015) (Fig. 4). Cogan and Derricott (1996) set out a four-step framework for the practical implementation of these dimensions. The first step involves developing the school itself as a model of multi-dimensional citizenship, where each of these dimensions is recognised and nurtured amongst young people. This leads to the second step, which involves recognising that the school exists as one part of a much wider community, and that for successful implementation of multi-dimensional citizenship, the school must be integrated within the wider community. Third, the school must also become a model for that wider community of environmental stewardship and sustainability. The heart of the school should be a deliberation-based curriculum, where students are not only taught to make decisions, but are allowed, even encouraged to do so, either individually or collectively. The fourth step necessitates a new approach to

Fig. 4 Morris and Cogan’s multi-dimensional citizenship model

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teaching, which means teacher professional learning and professional development need to change. Cogan and Morris (2001) began like many of the researchers previously mentioned, by identifying the difficulty in determining the meaning of ‘good citizen’ or ‘good citizenship education’. As evidence for this, they cited the wide range of educational curricula that purports to deal with civics and citizenship education. These included the National Curriculum Standards for Social Studies in the US (1994), the Guidelines for Civic Education in Hong Kong (1996), the Crick Report in the UK (1998), and Discovering Democracy in Australia (1997). Studying these approaches, which shared similarities, showed the variety of content, pedagogy and purposes that constitute the broader civics and citizenship education agenda. Cogan and Morris (2001) also criticised the abstract nature of much of the study about civics education, stating that while it is the teachers who are the key determinants of a pupil’s experience, ‘there is a dearth of studies that focus on schools (as opposed to national systems and curriculum components) as the core unit of analysis’ (p. 3). To remedy this, they studied 17 schools in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and the US. Data was gathered through a program of lesson observations and interviews with teachers and students. This research explored four main areas: the particular school’s policies in regard to citizenship education; the nature and extent of curriculum citizenship activities; how key stakeholders perceived the importance of these activities; and similarities between the schools. In order to make this research more general, Cogan and Morris agreed that they would use the term civics and citizenship education in the broadest possible sense. The issue of values, that is, the types of values promoted through civics and citizenship education, was another difficult issue. In the end, Cogan and Morris identified the following values: democracy, social cohesion, self-cultivation, economic success, family life, natural identity, and civic and community values. Their study provides an interesting analysis of the ways that civics and citizenship education differ across countries. The first point they make is that some countries blend civics and citizenship education into other subjects, whereas other countries simply have a separate subject. They identified some difficulties: The boundaries are weak as the delivery of civic values relies on its infusion or permeation across more traditional school subjects, such as social studies, history and geography … In Australia, civics and citizenship education was not the primary role of any group of teachers and the assessment of civic learning was not a key element of high stakes assessment exercises’. (p. 112)

In addition, the actual curriculum, as evidenced through the learning materials provided, did not always address the active citizenship component of civics and citizenship education: Generally, where textbooks were available, their focus was on content and knowledge that stressed education about citizenship. Thus, the goal was to provide pupils with knowledge about national history and the structures and processes of government. (p. 112)

Cogan and Morris refer to Le Métais (1997), who had identified that values within civics and citizenship education worldwide were expressed in three separate ways.

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Their research suggested that in the first way, as evidenced by schools in the US, there is little or no reference to values. The second method, which is the one adopted by Australia, is where values are expressed in general terms. Finally, in countries like Japan, the national values are expressed in great detail - and are often at risk of becoming academicised. Regarding the importance of civics and citizenship education in the schools they observed, Cogan and Morris are critical. They argue that in schools where there were no separate subjects called civics, there were difficulties (which) arise from the integration of civics as a theme within other school subjects. Activities such as special days are haphazard across schools, student councils are limited to a few students and they have no power, and school parliaments are lame. (p. 116)

7 Murray Print’s Typology: Civics for Survival, for Community Service and to Exercise Leadership An important figure in the history of Australian civics and citizenship education is Murray Print. As well as being one of the designers of Discovering Democracy, Print also examined the ways young people and teachers feel about civics and citizenship. One of his findings was about the relationship between the kind of school a child was attending and the form that civics and citizenship education took that in the school (Print 2001). This research relates directly to the guiding question of this chapter; namely, what should be the content and structure for a citizenship curriculum. One can draw from Print’s research a threefold typology where the curricula focus is either on (a) survival, (b) community service or (c) leadership. This study was conducted between 1997 and 1999, when Print examined the kind of citizenship education being delivered in three different schools, each representative of a different administrative system. One of the schools was an ‘average’ government school in Sydney. According to Print, civics and citizenship education here was focused on ‘civics for survival’; that is, students learnt the kinds of skills that are useful for later life: literacy, numeracy, an understanding of Australian history, perspectives and way of life. This was expressed in a number of different ways: in the school’s welfare and discipline policy, and in a number of extracurricular events that emphasised particular parts of Australian culture, like ANZAC Day. According to Print (2001), this school’s leadership team believed this would provide students with the knowledge, skills and experienced that will enable them to become effective and committed citizens of Australia. In the process, and in the context of this highly multicultural school, it is believed important that students develop civic values of tolerance, support for diversity, equality, civility, respect for the law and social cohesion. (p. 80)

In spite of these ideals, civics education was not translated effectively in the curriculum. Instead, it was delivered mostly through the extracurricular events such as ANZAC Day. This approach was supported by the pedagogical theory underpinning it: the staff at the school were well aware that

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students learn civics effectively through active engagement. Consequently, they supplied a large number of special days and taught minimal civic knowledge through academic subjects. (p. 88)

An illustration of this approach was the school’s implementation of a school parliament and a student representative council, both of which were seen to be developing important civic knowledge in an active way. However, Print (2001) was sceptical about the value of such an approach: While the school clearly supported students’ learning about and acquiring values of social cohesion, civility and equality, this did not translate into learning about identity or important democratic values. Vast areas of civics education were omitted from students’ learning opportunities. (p. 81)

The second school Print (2001) examined was a non-government religious school. Here Print identified a form of civics education that he described as ‘civics for duty’, which is characterised by the inculcation amongst students of a desire to help those less fortunate than themselves. Print wrote: The principal of (this school) sees the role of the school as providing high quality education to students from quite wealthy backgrounds. These students are expected to acquire a civic responsibility to help others not from their privileged situations. (p. 81)

In this school, the most important thing for students to learn was to acknowledge a sense of duty or service to the community. This notion of ‘service learning’, by which students work to assist members of the community in need, is often conflated with civics and citizenship education and warrants further comment. First, many schools have an element of service learning or outreach, where, for example, young people work in soup kitchens, do fundraising or, in more exclusive settings, travel overseas to work in orphanages in Thailand, for example. Service learning, however, deals with only one segment of civics and citizenship. It is important to recognise that these activities do not necessarily encourage a critical understanding of the causes of injustice in the world. If it is acknowledged that central to democracy are the principles of equality and justice, then it is equally important to ensure that as part of civics and citizenship education, young people learn to perceive the causes of injustice, and learn to work to address these causes. Too often in cases of service learning, young people are merely servicing these injustices, rather than relieving them. In this school, according to Print, the focus of the learning was on being a dutiful citizen. There was minimal evidence of civics and citizenship education within the school, and it was not well known or understood by students. Print argued that it had little effect upon the culture of the school. According to Print, ‘this was partly due to the school leadership which viewed civic education narrowly as students’ learning about their duty as an Australian citizen (p. 83). In the third school, an academically selective government school, Print (2001) identified civics for leadership as its form of civics education. The principal wanted the school to provide the best education possible for these talented students while maintaining the virtues of a government school education. In this environment,

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civics policy has a subdued role in school subjects, though through other school activities there are opportunities for students to learn civics and apply leadership skills. (p. 81)

In this case, civics education had a particularly low status. It was superseded by other subjects that were seen as ‘more academically rigorous’. Exam success was the overarching goal of the school, and this forced civics and citizenship education to the informal and extracurricular parts of the school. When it was delivered, ‘civics education was based on supporting values for enlightened leadership … but the applied values were about personal success, gaining knowledge and success on examinations’ (p. 89). This analysis identifies two common challenges for all civics educators. First, in schools where the emphasis is on academic success, how can civics and citizenship compete with other subjects, especially when there is limited value or requirement for a civics and citizenship examination? And even if it could, would it be recognised as being of the same value as other subjects that are seen as being more academically rigorous? In England, education authorities, acting on the recommendations of the Crick Report (1998), dealt with this challenge by implementing civics and citizenship as a separate subject, complete with the option to undertake a GCSE in Citizenship. Second, it is important to recognise that there must be an element of collaboration—and learning about collaboration—in civics and citizenship education. According to Dewey (1916), ‘democracy is primarily a mode of associated living’ (p. 87), and it is therefore vital that learning about civics and citizenship education is not just a personal activity, it should be undertaken as a member of a community.

8 Kerry Kennedy and Fluid Definitions of Active Citizenship: The Patriotic, Self-Regulated Entrepreneurial and Empowered Models Kerry Kennedy observes that, ‘As students, they are not yet citizens, but nevertheless are subject to family, school and community socialisation processes that prepare them for citizenship’ (2007, p. 305). As part of these socialisation processes, Kennedy (2007) identifies three main approaches to active citizenship. In the first approach, Kennedy recognises that the idea of active citizenship has entered the political and ideological lexicon of governments from all sides of the political spectrum, and that these governments have appropriated the term to mean whatever they have wanted it to mean: ‘They simply adopt “active citizenship” almost as a slogan that suits the politics of the day’ (p. 307). This indicates that there are significant differences amongst countries about what is meant by active citizenship. An example of this can be seen in Discovering Democracy. When it was originally instituted, the Keating Government sought to use it as a tool to encourage support for an Australian republic. In this case, an ‘active citizen’ was someone who was informed about the Republic debate and would take an active part in any referendum on the nature of Australia’s statehood. When the Howard Government came to power, it wanted to maintain the

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conception, and so an active citizen became someone who was aware of Australia’s historic links with the British Commonwealth. The second approach identified by Kennedy (2007) is conceptual/theoretical. This acknowledges that citizens have always been expected to take an active role in government. But what constitutes active is shaped by the politics of the day. In an era where neoliberal politics are dominant Kennedy observes there is a focus on the self-regulatory citizen, free of government restraints’ (2007, p. 307). To be an active citizen means to be entrepreneurial and to champion do it yourself and self-help models of active citizenship. The third approach is what Kennedy calls empowerment. Here the concept is to encourage students to become empowered citizens. However, Kennedy identifies that one of the major issues in this approach is that there is a complete lack of consistency between researchers on how to measure empowerment, which means it is difficult to compare the outcomes of empowerment programs.

9 Westheimer and Kahne’s Threefold Taxonomy: The Personally Responsible, the Participatory and Justice-Oriented Citizens An illuminating example of how civics and citizenship education is often co-opted by dominant discourses is given by Westheimer and Kahne (2003), who examined the way that educators and policymakers in the US have conflated democracy with patriotism. They argue that many school programs that purport to be developing democratic principles are actually only developing patriotism and community service. Neither of these two things are necessarily bad, but they are certainly not the same as developing an active and informed citizenry. Indeed, they suggest that the development of patriotism actually serves to silence the critical voice that is often considered crucial in democracies. Westheimer and Kahne write, ‘Democracy requires more than community service; it requires citizen participation in the affairs of state’ (p. 12). They argue strongly that schools should not be forced into making a choice between the false dichotomy of service education and political education; democracies require people with both of these skill sets to be effective. In addition, they caution that service and volunteering are by themselves not necessarily predictors of democratic participation by citizens, and should not be confused as such. In response, Westheimer and Kahne (2004a, b) suggested that education programs could be classified according to the conceptions of citizenship they were trying to develop. They argued that, while some programs might draw from more than one of these three conceptions, they would, for the most part, be aimed at just one of them. The first conception of citizenship is that of the ‘personally responsible citizen.’ According to Westheimer and Kahne (2004a, b), this is a type of citizen who fulfils the basic requirements of a citizen, but does little more than that and is certainly not politically active in any meaningful sense beyond voting regularly. The personally

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responsible citizen obeys the laws, pays their taxes and votes in elections, but little more. Westheimer and Kahne paraphrase such a citizen in the following way: The personally responsible citizen acts responsibly in his/her community by, for example, picking up litter, giving blood, recycling, volunteering, and staying out of debt. The personally responsible citizen works and pays taxes, obeys laws, and helps those in need during crises such as snowstorms or floods. The personally responsible citizen contributes to food or clothing drives when asked and volunteers to help those less fortunate whether in a soup kitchen or a senior centre. S/he might contribute time, money, or both to charitable causes. (2004b, p. 2)

Westheimer and Kahne are critical of civics and citizenship education that focuses mostly on teaching personally responsible citizenship. They argue these programs teach an individualistic understanding of what it means to be a citizen, emphasising traits such as honesty, integrity and responsibility for one’s owns action. However, Westheimer and Kahne are quick to point out that these traits are not inherently about democracy. To the extent that these traits detract from other important democratic priorities, they hinder rather than make possible democratic participation and change. For example, a focus on loyalty or obedience (common components of character education as well) work against the kind of critical reflection and action many assume are essential in a democratic society. (2004b, p. 4)

Educational programs that seek to develop these kinds of citizens are, to use McLaughlin’s (1992) terminology, minimal, that is, they generally teach that citizenship is a political right, granted by birth or naturalisation, rather than a way of acting or being. There is an emphasis on knowing the rights and responsibilities of a citizen and usually a great deal of content directed at teaching students the mechanisms required for governance. Furthermore, they often privilege individuality and personal traits over collaborative approaches to democracy. In Westheimer and Kahne’s taxonomy, the second idea of citizenship is the ‘participatory’ citizen. This kind of citizen is personally responsible citizen, but also committed to addressing injustice and social inequality. Educational programs designed to support the development of participatory citizens focus on teaching students about how government and other institutions (e.g. community based organizations, churches) work and about the importance of planning and participating in organized efforts to care for those in need, for example, or in efforts to guide school policies. While the personally responsible citizen would contribute cans of food for the homeless, the participatory citizen might organize the food drive. (2004b, p. 4)

The third conception of citizenship, and the least considered if judged by the number of programs that attempt to develop this kind of citizen, is the ‘justice orientedcitizen’. This is the model that inspired the Justice Citizens program that I developed and led. A justice-oriented citizen is capable of identifying issues of inequality or injustice in the local, national and even global community, and of working collaboratively with other justice-oriented citizens to effect long-lasting change. Westheimer and Kahne (2004b) assert that: Justice oriented citizens critically assess social, political, and economic structures and consider collective strategies for change that challenge injustice and, when possible, address

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root causes of problems. The vision of the justice oriented citizen shares with the vision of the participatory citizen an emphasis on collective work related to the life and issues of the community. (p. 5)

The crucial difference between a participatory citizen and a justice-oriented citizen is the citizen’s understanding of how to effect systemic change. A participatory citizen might address a particular issue by seeking to alleviate the immediate issues through charity work or some similar endeavour. A justice-oriented citizen would interrogate the issue from a critical and structuralist perspective to understand the root causes of the issue, and thus affect change at a macroscopic level. An example might make this distinction clearer: while a participatory citizen might be concerned about homelessness in their community, and set up a soup kitchen to provide food for homeless people, a justice-oriented citizen might choose to deal with this issue by establishing a social action initiative that campaigns for better mental health funding, based on the premise that there are links between the lack of proper care for people with mental health issues and the high numbers of homeless people that suffer from them. In addition, justice-oriented citizens need to be conversant with lobbying and the way lobby groups seek to influence legislation. Therefore, linked to the education required for this latter kind of citizen is an understanding of how to work collaboratively with others and how to establish and lead social action initiatives. In the following chapter, I am going to describe in more detail Justice Citizens as well as students reactions to having participated in the program. The research portraits interspersed between the substantive chapters of this book should provide insight into some of the critical moments that I experienced through Justice Citizens. However, in addition to constructing these research portraits, I undertook a series of interviews with student participants to attempt to understand their perceptions of active citizenship and how their involvement in the program might have changed those perceptions. The following chapter includes an analysis of some of the key themes from these interviews, and will lead into the following chapters where I try to explicate a form of pedagogy, which I am describing as Justice Pedagogy, which is intended to develop active citizenship amongst young people in these complex and challenging times.

Research Portrait Seven: Interview with Talent, Part Two As a side note, a couple of students still wanted to find out more about refugees. But again, the context was crucial; they wanted to talk to refugees about what it was like living in Australia, in Penrith. My second idea about refugees was more of a long shot. I was receiving some funding through Penrith City Council, and their community cultural development officer had put me in touch with a young man called Yadav Timsina, a Bhutanese refugee studying to be a nurse at a nearby further education college. He agreed to be interviewed on camera by a delegation of my students. I knew which students I

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wanted to take with me: Emmalee, who had asked me the question about refugees the previous lesson, and her friend Liz. They agreed and we met Yadav at his college’s library after school. Emmalee, Liz and I had gone through a couple of basic filming techniques, and I had asked them to construct some questions without my help. I wanted them to take the interview in the direction they wanted. As we waited for Yadav in the library, Liz and Emmalee nervously paced the room. They were out of their comfort zone; neither had been to this college before, and dressed in their school uniforms they looked out of place amongst its older students. Yadav arrived and was eager to help, but he was nervous too. He said he was worried about what he might be asked, and how well he could answer. I looked at Emmalee and made an ‘over to you’ gesture. She smiled, giggled apprehensively, and switched on the camera. The next 45 minutes were surprising. From the moment she turned on the camera Emmalee assumed a totally new demeanour. Gone was the shy school student, and instead here was a determined neophyte journalist. In our conversations in previous lessons Emmalee had agreed with many of the comments about asylum seekers being dangerous to the Australian way of life. Not surprisingly, she and Liz led off in that direction, asking why Yadav had felt the need to flee Bhutan. As Yadav laid out the details of his life—fleeing the country one night, spending the next 12 years in Nepal in a refugee camp, and then finally being resettled in Australia without his brothers and sisters—I could see Emmalee’s and Liz’s ideas about refugees changing. They had probably never met anyone who had been through such upheaval, and to hear it from someone who lived near them and was only a few years older than they were made the interview process even more powerful. The most telling section of the conversation, though, happened towards the end when Liz and Emmalee asked Yadav about his experiences in Australia. Yadav started off by saying everyone had been friendly to him, but Emmalee changed tack and asked whether he had ever experienced racism. After pausing, he said that sometimes on the train he gets called things like ‘dirty Indian’, even though he is Bhutanese. When Emmalee asked how that made him feel, he responded that he felt pretty bad.

References Abowitz, K. K., & Harnish, J. (2006). Contemporary discourses of citizenship. Review of Educational Research, 76(4), 653–690. Alderson, P. (1999). Human rights and democracy in schools: Do they mean more than “picking up litter and not killing whales”? The International Journal of Children’s Rights, 7(2), 185–205. Apple, M. W. (2004). Ideology and curriculum. Abingdon: Routledge. Aristotle, Barker, E., & Stalley, R. F. (1995). The politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). (2015). Curriculum Draft Years 3–10 Australian Curriculum: Civics and Citizenship. Retrieved from http://www.australia ncurriculum.edu.au. Barry, B. (2001). Culture and equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bauböck, R. (1994). Transnational citizenship. Aldershot: Edward Elgar.

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Carolissen, R. (2014). A critical feminist approach to social inclusion and citizenship in the context of the co-curriculum. Journal of Student Affairs in Africa, 2(1), 83–88. Cogan, J. J. (2000). Multidimensional citizenship: A conceptual policy model. Minneapolis: (n.p). Cogan, J. J., & Derricott, R. (1996). The effects of educational reform on the content and status of the social subjects in England and Wales and the USA: A case study. International Review of Education, 42(6), 623–646. Cogan, J. J., & Morris, P. (2001). The development of civic values in six Pacific Rim societies. Special Issue of the International Journal of Educational Research, 35(1), 1–123. Davies, I., Evans, M., & Reid, A. (2005). Globalising citizenship education? A critique of “global education” and “citizenship education”. British Journal of Educational Studies, 53(1), 66–89. De Groot, G. J. (2014). Student protest: The sixties and after. New York: Routledge. Department for Education and Employment/Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (DfEE/QCA). (1999). Education for citizenship and the teaching of democracy in schools. London: QCA. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: The Macmillan Company. Kennedy, K. J. (2007). Student constructions of “active citizenship”: What does participation mean to students? British Journal of Educational Studies, 55(3), 304–324. Kerr, D. (1999). Citizenship education: An international comparison (International Review of Curriculum and Assessment Frameworks Paper 4). QCA. Le Métais, J. (1997). Values and aims in curriculum and assessment frameworks. School Curriculum and Assessment Authority. Marshall, T. H. (1950). Citizenship and social class and other essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Matthews, J., & Sidhu, R. (2005). Desperately seeking the global subject: International education, citizenship and cosmopolitanism. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 3(1), 49–66. McLaughlin, T. H. (1992). Citizenship, diversity and education: A philosophical perspective. Journal of Moral Education, 21(3), 235–246. Okin, S. M. (1992). Women, equality, and citizenship. Queen’s Quarterly, 99(1), 57–72. O’Loughlin, M. (1997). Education for citizenship: Integrating knowledge, imagination, and democratic dispositions. Forum of Education, 52(2), 24–33. Ozdowski, S. (2015). Human rights education in Australia. In J. Zajda (Ed.), Second international handbook on globalisation, education and policy research (pp. 537–555). Netherlands: Springer. Print, M. (2001). From “survival” to “leadership”: The practice of civic education in Australia. International Journal of Educational Research, 35(1), 77–91. Schugurensky, D., & Myers, J. P. (2003). Citizenship education: Theory, research and practice. Encounters on Education, 4(Fall), 1–10. Thucydides, Warner, R., & Finley, M. I. (1972). History of the peloponnesian war. Hammondsworth: Penguin Books. Walzer, M. (1989). Citizenship. In T. Ball, J. Farr, & R. L. Hanson (Eds.), Political innovation and conceptual change (pp. 211–220). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Westheimer, J., & Kahne, J. (2003). Reconnecting education to democracy: Democratic dialogues. Phi Delta Kappan, 85(1), 8. Westheimer, J., & Kahne, J. (2004a). What kind of citizen? The politics of educating for democracy. American Educational Research Journal, 41(2), 237–269. Westheimer, J., & Kahne, J. (2004b). Educating the “good” citizen: Political choices and pedagogical goals. PS: Political Science and Politics, 37(2), 241–247. Williams, M. S. (1998). Voice, trust, and memory: Marginalized groups and the failings of liberal representation. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Young, I. M. (1989). Polity and group difference: A critique of the ideal of universal citizenship. Ethics, 99, 250–274. Zbar, V. (2008). Discovering democracy ten years on. Ethos, 12(3), 3–6.

Chapter 9

Student and Adult Understandings of Active Citizenship

Abstract This chapter explores some of the different ways students and adults understand what is meant by active citizenship. These understandings are integrated with theorising, as well as differentiated between age groups to identify and describe the relationship between activism, the school setting and civics and citizenship.

1 Introduction The research portraits interspersed between the substantive chapters of this book should provide insight into some of the critical moments that I experienced through Justice Citizens. However, in addition to constructing these research portraits, I undertook a series of interviews with student participants and other stakeholders to attempt to understand their perceptions of active citizenship and how their involvement in the program might have changed those perceptions. This chapter includes an analysis of some of the key themes from these interviews, and will lead into the following chapters where I try to explicate a form of pedagogy, which I am describing as Justice Pedagogy, which is intended to develop active citizenship amongst young people in these complex and challenging times.

2 Adult Understandings of Active Citizenship 2.1 Definitions of Citizenship: Top-Down vs Youth-Led Shermis and Barth (1982) reject the notion that, before students can become active citizens, they must be informed about the institutional principles that underpin democracy. This approach is not the one that is usually articulated in formal education programs where there is often a top-down, government-led approach to citizenship education, such as that present in Discovering Democracy (Curriculum Corporation 1998, as discussed in Chapter 6). © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Heggart, Activist Citizenship Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4694-9_9

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O’Loughlin (1997) suggests, by way of contrast, that citizenship education should be less about the history of democracy and its governing fundamentals, and more about the experiences of young men and women growing up in Australia. This call for a youth-centred approach to civics and citizenship education is one that is growing increasingly common; Nicoll et al. (2013), for example, have rejected the dominant discourses in citizenship education and instead suggested broadening the notion of citizenship discourses to include ideas of citizenship that stem from young people themselves. My interviews confirm the wider research that the construction of active citizenship remains a confused field; that the states and territories of Australia have all, in the past and continuing to the present day, adopted different approaches to citizenship education compounds this. This confusion was probably enhanced by the fact that staff who were tasked with delivering civics and citizenship education lacked formal qualifications in the subject area (Mellor 2003), and some were not able to take part in the professional development that accompanied the launch of Discovering Democracy.

2.2 Tentative Understandings of Active Citizenship Of the 12 teachers and other adults that I interviewed, most struggled to describe active citizenship. The most commonly identified trait of an active citizen was the need to be informed. A number of the teachers interviewed suggested that it was important for students to be informed or aware, but these teachers often did not develop that further by suggesting that there was a need for a critical approach. Thus, in terms of civics and citizenship programs like Discovering Democracy, some teachers seemed to feel that knowing about the systems of government was enough to be active as a citizen—there was no requirement to actually take part in any meaningful way. This is one such example: OWEN: Well, I think active citizens, the first part of the process is being informed. One of the… civil and political rights… is the right to seek and impart information, so surely part of being a citizen is being informed, which I think goes beyond reading the Tele (a local Tabloid newspaper), to hear what someone else thinks about it, you know, nine year old reading level, nine year old reading language. Owen is expressing a point of view that is quite common amongst the teachers I spoke to (and, according to my review of the literature, also amongst other teachers and policymakers). In the extract above, Owen suggests that there is a chronological order to be followed in citizenship education. Firstly, a student must become informed. Only after that, Owen seems to suggest, can a student actually become ‘active’—whatever that might mean. As well as coming first, the notion of being informed is also the most important part of being an active citizen; indeed, a teacher’s responsibility, according to some, ends with informing young people.

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This approach, while common, is part of the problem with citizenship education in Australia. Rather than a linear, cause and effect understanding of citizenship (if you know this, then you’ll be an active citizen), my research seeks to introduce an alternative paradigm, based on a new philosophy of civics and citizenship education and drawing from the ideas of complexity theory, which acknowledge that nonlinearity can characterise many environments in which we interact. This approach, which I describe in more detail in Chapters 9 and 10 of this book is called ‘Justice Pedagogy’ and it is a more sophisticated approach because it draws from both critical pedagogy and complexity theory to describe a new framework for citizenship education. In a similar fashion to O’Loughlin and Shermis and Barth above, I reject the notion of knowledge before action, and instead embrace the concept of praxis as being central to civics and citizenship education. Freire (1970) described praxis as ‘reflective action’—wherein action and reflection are combined into the same motion. When applied to citizenship education, this suggests that students can become informed through the process of doing citizenship education-related activities, rather than having to learn about them first, before doing them. Another element that some teachers identified was the idea that the purpose of citizenship education was to develop an element of criticality. This was best exemplified by Owen who said that this critical element occurred as part of becoming informed: OWEN: And so it would be my hope that, once we’ve educated these students, that they will believe democracy to be important, I think it is, believe it to be important and be able to actually participate in it in a thoughtful, critical, intelligent way, rather, than I vote Labor cos me dad does—that sort of unthinking approach, I think its really important. In the interview excerpt above, Owen also unconsciously highlights one of the contradictions in citizenship education. He expresses the hope that students would come to believe that democracy is good and important—this kind of assumption is common in many forms of citizenship education—but in the next sentence he argues for students to be able to think critically and analytically. This suggests then it is also important to encourage students to think critically about democracy as a form of government, too, rather than simply accepting the assumption that it is automatically ‘good’. Such an analysis might require students to consider the way that democracy might only serve the needs of a limited number of groups within society, or the troubled history of women’s or Indigenous rights in Australia when compared to the ideals of democracy. Discussions about the value of democracy over other forms of government go straight to the centre of the matter of what it means to be an active citizen in Australia; the development of a tolerant and diverse society is important in Australia for many reasons. As shown in the excerpt above, Owen was disparaging about parts of the print media, especially the tabloid newspapers. This was mirrored by most of the other teachers, who were critical of the media and its role in ‘dumbing down’ and oversimplifying public debate. Television media, in particular, was heavily denigrated

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for its less than critical approach to important issues. I’ve chosen Peta’s comments to represent the general thrust of the teachers’ point of view regarding the media. PETA:

I think what immediately springs to mind is that we’re used to being a first world nation, we’re possibly one of the most economically successful nations in the world at this present time, and we don’t have hardship, we don’t have war, we don’t have conflict, we don’t have insecurity, so um what I think is really important is to raise kids that are aware that this ain’t reality, we live in a complex world, and one of the most important things is to make it clear to young kids that our trickle of refugees that arrive by boats is like a minuscule point something of a percent of the number of refugees that exist in the world and we shouldn’t be bleating and crying about what are we going to do, but that’s the general dialogue of the commercial media and it’s really hard to work against that. It’s not our dialogue, it’s the dialogue of a certain mindset. KEITH: I understand. PETA: I think it’s really hard to explain that to children. Also, I think that Australia has a really, really big problem of being isolated. It doesn’t share a border, so the minute anyone comes across its borders, we have, we get really stressed, which is not reality for any European country, it’s not reality for any Asian country, you know, they’re all interconnected. KEITH: Yeah, it’s that island mentality. PETA: And I think that’s a really important global issue that we need to instil in children. I think that there is some work being done, and I think that’s important for schools to do because sometimes there’s a mindset around, in that age group that take the Today-Tonight view, so I think it’s important that schools work hard on that, and again I think that global issues, like whaling, how do you untangle that whole thing about we’re being illegal… these people are being illegal by boarding these whaling boats, but we’re being a bit spineless by not saying you can’t do this because they’re a trade partner. So that international relation is a really hard one to untangle, and most people can’t do it, but kids can engage that, if it’s presented to them. Peta is suggesting that young people are not being engaged critically by the media. Because the media presents controversial issues in a certain way, students often accept that as fact, when in reality it is far from a considered point of view. However, Peta is optimistic about young people’s capability of engaging with these issues on a more sophisticated level when they are given a chance. In particular, she suggests that while the issues related to whaling and asylum seekers are ‘hard… to untangle’, ‘kids can engage with that if it’s presented to them’. This is another form of critical engagement with the media and these issues; in such a case, the citizenship education classroom becomes a site for resistance, and the whole structure of the course moves away from awareness raising and towards an approach more closely aligned with critical pedagogy. As Owen explains: OWEN: I use those specific examples to teach those specific ideas and to try and teach students to approach what’s happening in the world around them in

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a fairly critical way, and not to simply accept verbatim what we’re told by the media and the politicians, the particular interpretations that are given to things by political parties in order for their own political ends. Owen is explicitly teaching students to question what they are told by media and politicians, but he is doing this in a particular way. Rather than the self-defeating resistance that characterises much student action in schools, this form of resistance is aimed at developing a better understanding of the world and the students’ role in it; this echoes Freire’s (1974) depictions of a critical consciousness. Other teachers (and many students) identified much more localised issues than whaling or asylum seekers. In some cases, this was linked to a critical awareness of place. For example, Peter, an older teacher who was dedicated to teaching students about environmental issues, emphasised the importance of students learning about place and its links to civic responsibility: KEITH: So, the kind of um… the kind of trait that you’ve identified an active citizen might have is a critical awareness, I guess. PETER: Yes. You’ve got to have a very strongly analytical sense of the quality and place. Sense of place is so important to a sense of civic responsibility. Because if you really are connected to the place in which you live, you are constantly looking at how it’s going and you are making moves to minimise its problems and accentuate its values, so that you are liable to do things that other people would find astonishing. Landcare strikes me as a marvellous initiative. And the fact that it came out of the Farmer’s Federation, working with the Greens, strikes me as the most amazing combination of bedfellows. Farmers have for years been accused of pillaging and you know not caring. In the excerpt above, Peter makes a point that some of the students mirrored. For Peter, active citizenship has direct links with being part of, and looking after, the local community, especially its natural environment. Students were far more likely than teachers to identify examples of active citizenship that were related to their local community than more national examples.

2.3 Active Citizenship: The Adult Perspective While students and, indeed, teachers, struggled to reach a consensus on the definition of what citizenship meant or what it included, both groups were able to identify examples of what they thought was active citizenship. While teachers were more likely to identify examples of active citizenship with a political angle, students were more likely to identify examples that were closer to their own experience, centred in their own community. Teachers often drew examples from their own experience in the classroom. Owen, for example, spoke about a student who was passionate about Indigenous issues:

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OWEN: Yes, I used to teach a girl in year 10 several years ago whose father was one of the original freedom riders… Charles Perkins (Charles Perkins was a well-respected Indigenous rights campaigner)… used to travel around NSW. Aboriginal man, educated at Sydney Uni, and his daughter was absolutely fanatical about anything Aboriginal. Aboriginal rights, tent embassy and she would on occasion, be so desperately passionate about these issues that she exceeded the bounds of the information she had. The opinion outstripped the information. But she was passionate about it and willing to debate it and critique it and everything else. Again, in the excerpt above, Owen identifies the notion of being informed as being vital to active citizenship; however, he acts as a kind of gatekeeper in this excerpt, criticising the student in his class because her passion ‘exceeded the bounds of the information she had’. Owen identifies the struggle for Indigenous Australian recognition as something that an ‘active citizen’ might be involved in, but he is hesitant to describe his student as an active citizen, despite her interest and desire to work towards justice for Indigenous Australians. For Owen, in his authority figure role of classroom teacher, he was only willing to allow the student in question to be ‘active’ in the ways that he accepted. This is an example of the ways that an adult discourse about what is or isn’t active citizenship can silence a student’s voice. Another teacher, Nick, identified an issue that was in the news at the time. He explained the way that social media was alive with criticism about the SOPA Act in the US (SOPA was a proposed law planning to limit privacy for online media users): NICK:

There was an enormous uproar in these online forums and these online communities and it was quite a shock for me to see young people so… and a lot of these people are people who are not politically minded, and they felt that it was an attack on their freedom, so whenever there’s an attack on their freedom, and… that’s when I see young people becoming, you know… outspoken, and you even see this within school, whenever students are told, you, for example, year 11 can’t go home early on Thursdays because they’ve got a class, and they feel that’s an attack on their freedom, and their privileges as a senior student, so I feel whenever there is an attack on personal freedom on the young people or on their privileges, that’s kind of when they stand tall, but on issues of things that don’t, aren’t, tangible to them or aren’t direct to them, so boat people… they’re like, it doesn’t affect me, I don’t live on the coast of WA, I don’t ever see it, I only see it on the news, if they watch it on the news, definitely attacks on personal freedom. KEITH: So motivated, perhaps, by self-interest? NICK: Yeah, of course, self interest. Nick identifies that young people are far more likely to become outspoken about an issue if they feel that it is an attack on their personal freedom; in this, Nick identifies the key notion of self-interest and its role in determining active citizenship. Crucially, he also is aware that some of the issues that are important to young people are not

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necessarily those that are seen as important by others: for example, the SOPA Act received very little in the way of coverage in the Australian mainstream media, but young people were clearly both informed of the issue and concerned about the way that they felt it might impinge upon what they saw as a fundamental right: the right to access the internet. This also is interesting for the fact that it shows that young people are often capable of using new media in order to gain information about topics that they are interested in—and engaging income forms of activism about those issues (debates about the virtues of clicktivism notwithstanding). Another individual that I interviewed, Sue Brown, was not a teacher. She was the president of the Parents and Friends Association at McCarthy and played a very active role in the school community, attending events, working in the canteen and acting as a ‘critical friend’. I interviewed Sue because I thought that, as a parent of a teenager and also as someone not expressly trained as a teacher, she might have some contrasting examples of what it meant to be an active citizen. Not surprisingly, Sue was very forthright in her views about just this topic: SUE:

It’s not an easy thing because by the time kids are in high school and becoming young adults, they’ve all these different layers of interest and things that pique their interest or don’t. So, you have to try and tap into all those areas. The only way you can do that is by continually having people from the community come in through the door and inviting those kids to come and help at whatever activity they’ve got. For example, you’ve got Relay for Life, so you’ve got those people coming in saying: “Look, we know this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea or you’ve got family commitments and you can’t make it but for those of you that came, come along.” You had the Salvation Army here last weekend so (inaudible) (27:26). You have the other things people can (inaudible) (27:34) but all you can do is have…say ‘yes’ to as many people who knock on the door asking, obviously it’s got to fit into the realms of, you know, child safety and everything else, but who are looking for young people to go and help them. KEITH: Absolutely…putting the school out there in the community or bringing the community into the school. SUE: Yeah! And again, it’s really hard because in high school and any school, teachers are just so time poor, the curriculum is so demanding plus you have to do all of the extra-curricular activities to try and engage every child at school and so to do that, you’ve got to offer them all these other extra (inaudible) (28:17) activities, you know, the things you do after school; your archaeology group, your (inaudible) (28:21). All those things is trying to engage kids into a group where they’re thinking of themselves…yes they enjoy it but they’re also looking at what they can achieve as a group. If you get kids starting to achieve things as a group, then they realize that it’s not all about me but also then those groups might move onto to other activities and you think: “Well, hang on. I don’t want to graffiti that wall because that’s where my group meets and I don’t like that feel of having graffiti on the wall.” It then starts to bring in all those other peripheral things because

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it brings out ownership of you, ownership of a common good that we’re doing something as a group and then maybe hopefully, ownership of that area where our group does their activity. And yes, you then have to cope with the downfall when someone does graffiti your area, but then you…if you feel that you’ve been hard (inaudible) (29:19) then that means good. That means your community’s psyche is starting to develop. Sue offers a powerful contrast to the individualistic ideal of young people as suggested by Nick in the previous excerpt. While Nick argues that young people seem to express citizenship in a self-interested way, Sue (while not necessarily disagreeing with that point of view) argues that it is the role of the school to try and develop a more community-minded point of view. She suggests that by involving young people in collective action then it will lead to them thinking about others, as well as themselves: ‘If you get kids starting to achieve things as a group, then they realise that it’s not all about me’. Sue is also very explicit about the importance of ‘doing’ citizenship, rather than simply learning about it. For Sue, and especially for the other students that I spoke to, active citizenship was best encouraged through participation in community or school activities. Sue, perhaps because of her different perspective when compared to teachers, also recognises the role that community groups play in the development of active citizenship. In particular, Sue argues that young people need to be exposed to as many different kinds of experiences and community groups as possible. In the excerpt above, Sue identifies Relay for Life (a charity that seeks to raise money for cancer research) and the Salvation Army (a Christian charity that seeks to help those in poverty) as examples of groups that work with schools to develop active citizenship. This is a crucial point, and one with which I agree strongly; if students are going to ‘do’ citizenship, that is, be active citizens rather than simply learn about citizenship, then it is vital that young people are active in real issues in their local communities— which necessitates school–community partnerships.

3 Student Accounts of Active Citizenship The role of the local community in developing active citizenship, and providing a space for the active citizenship to take place, was something that was identified by students. In the example below, Lachlan, one of the students, centres his ideas of active citizenship specifically around community action: KEITH: LACHLAN: KEITH: LACHLAN: KEITH:

What kind of things does a citizen need to know about? They need to know about their area. Their local community, what about their local community? You need to know, you know the strong aspects; what’s wrong with their community and why sometimes their community is good. Okay.

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LACHLAN: They need to know, what’s good for the community as well, so you know things that a make it a better community. They need to know about people in the community as well. So, we don’t lead to ignorant people, so you know with immigrants and stuff they don’t want…you don’t want them being just not aware…because like new formed idiot almost. Where they— KEITH: Yeah. LACHLAN: They think they know or he’s from somewhere, not going to talk about anything. If they know about cultures and the world they will… they will know about—they’ll be more tolerant and more patient. KEITH: Yeah, okay. LACHLAN: So a citizen yeah needs to know those kinds of things. In the excerpt above, Lachlan’s conception of an active citizen is based almost entirely on his or her involvement in their local community, founded on a deep knowledge of what is wrong and what is good about their local community. However, it would be wrong to think that Lachlan’s response is simplistic because of his emphasis on the local over the national or international. Indeed, Lachlan describes the importance of citizens knowing ‘about cultures and the world’ with the end result of them being ‘more tolerant and more patient’. I think this level of understanding is impressive for anybody, but especially for a teenager. Lachlan has effectively linked the need for global knowledge with its effects within local communities—and the importance of such knowledges for civil society. Lachlan also demonstrates a beginning understanding of a critical consciousness. He specifically references that it is important to know ‘what’s wrong with their community’ as well as the importance of knowing ‘things that make it a better community’. In these excerpts, it seems that Lachlan is starting to recognise the causes of injustices in his community but also his—and other citizens—agency to change these issues. In hindsight, it would have been valuable to explore these issues further; I believe it is touching upon a theme that is vital to active citizenship: it is not enough to recognise that there are problems in our communities. Rather, we must envision a future that is more just, and then work collectively to achieve that future. Other students did actually go further than Lachlan in their descriptions of local issues and how they might interact with them: SHANECE: We’ve discussed some topics for film making…what we could do to…we were making films (inaudible) (14:23) on bullying or discrimination with the one that we’re doing. We’re doing bullying. So, we’re going to try and make one out why people actually do start bullying?” When somebody bullies someone it’s just supposed that maybe they’ve got a bad home or they don’t really have much to do. I find out this is a really good subject because it shows how we can kind of deal with it and how we can stop it in some ways. [Interviewer coughing] KEITH: And, do you see bullying as an issue related to justice like all the other issues we’ve talked about?

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SHANECE: Yes, I do, because like for bullying…bullying rates are really high for our age, so that’s why I find it…it is part of justice because no one really deserves to be bullied. We all should treat each other equally. KEITH: Okay, okay. And, making a film is going to do what? SHANECE: Making a film will help people understand in a way that ‘it’s not right to do that’. And then, you can try and see what strategies to use to kind of stop it. KEITH: Okay. So, it’s creating awareness and providing assistance to people who might be being bullied already. Shanece wanted to make a film about bullying. However, unlike the rather tepid efforts that such school-led films often are, Shanece took a much more critical approach to the film-making process. Shanece was particularly looking for a way to address root causes of bullying. Rather than leaving it as ‘bullying is bad’ or that ‘bullying is something that just happens’, Shanece is suggesting that she has a role to play in working towards a more just school environment. This is interesting for two reasons: firstly, Shanece is rejecting the role assigned to students in most educational institutions. She is not willing to be an ‘object’ to be worked upon (to use Freire’s terminology) but instead sees herself as a subject—capable of acting against injustices that she identifies. She also recognises that bullying, in this case, is not just a fact of life, but something that can be changed. Secondly, Shanece is also realistic in that she doesn’t expect a single film to address bullying at her school, but she recognises that it might contribute towards an awareness and a possible solution sometime in the future. Another example from the students was helping out in the local church: NICK A: I sometimes help out at the church so, say, if we have a big mass or baptism coming up, I stay up at the church and help them prepare for the thingo, and when I was in year 6, at the end of year 6, I was the recipient of the Fr Kevin Hannan award. That’s for community service, and I was the second person ever to get the award, so I was real proud of that. KEITH: What kinds of things did you do to get that award? NICK A: Altar serving for thing, then I helped with my school, which is part of my parish. I helped them with a lot of staff out of school and in school, and also with the church I connected up with, I went to a, last year I went to WYD with my parish, but not actually where it was, in Parramatta. We went to that, as our church. And we were proud of that, me, Bill Riley and Joshua Picones, and just through that year, they were looking at people, and I just helped as much as I can in my parish and at school and that. KEITH: And you’re not getting anything for doing this are you… NICK A: Nah, I just love to altar serve, it’s something that I like to do, and hopefully after I finish, I’m going to become an acolyte. So I can keep on helping with the church, so I try and not go away from them. Nick identified that this was part of being an active citizen, and that he had actually been recognised with an award because of his service. Although the ideas of service

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are often foregrounded in a Christian community and a Christian school, it is clear that Nick believes that they are applicable to everybody as a model of community service. Nick is also clear that active citizenship often stems from a voluntary basis, and from a passion that is already there. Finally, Nick also identifies the pride that he feels from being of service to the community. All of these factors are, I would argue, central to understanding student and young person discourses about citizenship and therefore they should be included in any program aimed at developing active citizenship. This is something that Nick returns to, later in the interview. When asked about what a good citizen should do, Nick replies with this: NICK A: But I think as many people as possible should go to church and should try and help as much as they can with their community, because there should be more volunteers out there, and there’s a lot of things to do, especially with homeless people, doing soup kitchens, there’s not a lot of volunteers who do that, there’s just volunteers, the good thing is that you feel proud of it at the end. This excerpt shows that Nick is aware of the collective nature of social change. This is a quite sophisticated critique. In a way that is a startling departure from Nick H’s (the teacher, above) depiction of teenagers as only being interested in active citizenship when there is an element of self-interest, Nick (the student) instead suggests that young people can be active, and they can do it in a selfless way. The only reward that Nick identifies for volunteering is ‘that you feel proud of it at the end’. Another example of active citizenship came from Jaiden, an Indigenous Australian student at McCarthy College. Jaiden critiques the place of young indigenous men in society by referring to the work that his father is undertaking. Jaiden, when asked to identify someone who he thought was an active citizen, spoke about his father and the work he had done to encourage sporting talent amongst local youth: JAIDEN: Yeah, my dad and two of his friends. KEITH: So they set it up because they realized young Aboriginal people didn’t have opportunities… JAIDEN: Well, it’s cos like… it’s for the Mt Druitt kids as well, the ones in trouble and that, try to keep them out of trouble so they have stuff to do, cos most of their families and stuff… That’s where my dad used to live back then, and like they didn’t have a stable life. And they want to keep them out of trouble, so they have something to look forward too, and keep their skills too. Also trying to raise the money first, trying to raise the money so we can get stuff, to make them feel a part of something, not left out in the world. And like, cos couple of our people in our thing have been like, they’re about fourteen and they’ve been locked up, getting in trouble, getting in fights and that, so we’ve got to give them something to do, somewhere to go, like we’re all family and stuff. And when we’re on the streets and that, the kids say hello, so we can all stick together, so when you walk past someone you can say hello.

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It would be easy to dismiss this as an example of sport being used as an escape from poverty or crime, which is not necessarily such a bad thing, but Jaiden is very clear that there is more to this project than simply sporting and financial success. While Jaiden acknowledges that there are issues in Mount Druitt (‘the ones in trouble and that’), he also recognises the role that belonging to a group or community has upon an individual. His father and his colleagues are attempting to do much more than simply coach a football team; instead, they are trying to build community where previously none might have existed. Not only that, but Jaiden is also capable of identifying ways that communities strengthen the bonds they have with each other: ‘so we can all stick together, so when you walk past someone you can say hello’. Jaiden also had lots of ideas about the ways that he could be an active citizen. Interestingly, they matched some of the examples set by his father. In particular, Jaiden was concerned about everybody getting the chance to have their say—regardless of their ethnic background. This suggests that Jaiden was conscious that schools—and the broader community—were privileging traditional white voices over the voices of indigenous Australians and Islanders: JAIDEN: We should have a culture day. Cos culture is a big issue because people get teased and that. They should have festivals or something, bring some culture back, heaps of cultures, just so everyone can get to know each other and that. KEITH: Are you talking about in the school or in the whole community? JAIDEN: The whole community. Yeah. KEITH: So why haven’t you organized it? JAIDEN: My dad and his other friends were going to like do that, they were going to like, going to have like a multiculture day, and every team from a different culture, with a massive field with all the Fijians, the Samoans, the Cook Islands, and they’d have like all the dance what the culture do. They’d have the food, and like everything like that. The rules and that stuff. Show them how to cook the food and do stuff like that. That’s what they were going to do. That’s what they’re trying to do as well. However, although Jaiden recognises the way these voices are marginalised, and also how other people (in this case, his father and his friends) might strive to provide a site for those alternative voices, he doesn’t see much of a role for himself in this process— and certainly not much of a role at school. When asked why he hasn’t organised an event like this, Jaiden avoids the question, and returns to speaking about what his father would do. He uses a ‘they’ a lot in this excerpt, not, as you might suspect ‘we’, which perhaps suggests the powerlessness that Jaiden personally feels. This was something that I noticed throughout Justice Citizens: students were aware of the possibility for social change, but they were conscious of their own inability to prosecute it. Later in the interview, Jaiden returns to his theme of social isolation and its detrimental effects upon young people: KEITH:

Yeah… Is there enough for young people to do around Penrith?

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JAIDEN: Yeah. Sort of. But everything is kind of too far away. KEITH: So it’s not close enough really. What happens when people don’t feel welcome? JAIDEN: All kinds of stuff like suicide and that. Like. People feel left out, sometimes it can make you do bad stuff, cos like, if you’re left out… KEITH: commit crimes… JAIDEN: Yeah, and no one likes you and that. KEITH: Yeah, it can. I agree with that. Definitely. Do you know anyone whose felt like that? You don’t have to say their name. JAIDEN: Um… Some people. Yeah.. In a way that shows a level of sophistication sometimes considered lacking from teenagers’ views of the world, Jaiden is well aware that feelings of isolation from communities can lead to anti-social behaviour. In particular, Jaiden highlights suicide, as well as ‘bad stuff’, which one imagines means committing crimes or something similar. He also explains that he knows some people like that. In the film that Jaiden made, Indigenous Voices, he cites some examples of people that he has known and the way that they have been treated by society. He also spent a lot of time researching things like the incarceration rate of young Indigenous men, as well as the way these groups were presented to the media. In this section, I have explained some of the prevailing narratives that are present in discussions about active citizenship. I have also presented data and interpretation from interviews to elucidate the formation of these narratives. In the following chapter, I will re how students and teachers experience citizenship education, and how that shapes their understanding of what it means to be an active citizen in Australia in the twenty-first century.

Research Portrait Eight: Working with Experts From the outset, it was important to me that Justice Citizens produce outcomes that were of some artistic merit. Although the refrain, ‘It’s the process that’s important, not the product’, is one that is commonly deployed in group-based projects like Justice Citizens, this is not something that I necessarily agree with. I wanted the students to be able to point to a product they were proud of and say ‘I did that’. Peer and self-esteem would be contingent upon the students producing something they felt was worthwhile. This idea presented me with a significant challenge. I was, at best, a well-meaning amateur when it came to making films. Although I had toyed with running the Media Club at the school for a year or two, I was acutely aware of the mediocre nature of the products we had produced. These were fine for a hobby club, but the Justice Citizens films were going to have a much wider audience and I was hoping for a much more polished product.

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Working with my contacts in Penrith City Council, I enlisted the help of Bernadette, a local film-maker, radio personality, artist and journalist. Bernadette was very supportive of the Justice Citizens program and agreed to present three sessions to the students about interviewing people and making films. Schools are often closed communities. With the raft of child protection legislation, as well as the demands of time and curriculum, it can be very difficult to invite outside people into schools and to have them accepted by students. Bernadette is not a school teacher, and I was unsure how the students would relate to her. Would they be rude or, worse, uninterested? And if that happened, what should I do? To intervene would be to undermine Bernadette, as well as ruin the advantage of having an outside expert speak to the students. On the other hand, I knew their apathy might generate a kind of ennui that would limit the success of the rest of the project. The sessions got off to a rocky start. Bernadette was visibly uncomfortable, as were the students. I’d selected 25 students who had shown the most interest in the project so far and taken them to a classroom that was rarely used. The strangeness of this seemed to affect them. They were unsure about how to act, or what to do, and Bernadette led off with an academic reading about what made something ‘newsworthy’. Some of the less academic students were already looking bored, and I was close to intervening when Corin, a girl who was new to the school and rather quiet, raised her hand and interrupted. ‘Miss, can you show us a film that you’ve made?’ ‘Okay’, said Bernadette. I could see that she was hesitant. She attached her computer to the projector and pulled up a film she had made about an Indigenous Australian music group in western New South Wales. Without introducing it, she played it straight away. The class didn’t settle immediately, but once the talking in the film started, they became attentive. The film was a mix of interviews and clips from a music video. It lasted only three or four minutes, but the class was silent throughout it. I was gratified to see this. The students in Justice Citizens had grown up around things like YouTube; they were more used to watching short films and there was nothing new about watching a film in class. So now, rather than reading about news, they wanted to watch it. When the film stopped, Bernadette turned to the class and asked them what they thought. She was greeted by silence. I was sure that they had questions, but I needed to nudge them. I put up my hand up, and with a look of some gratitude Bernadette pointed at me. I asked where the film was shot. Even before Bernadette had finished answering, another couple of hands went up. I had broken the tension in the room, and the students now felt comfortable enough to ask about what we were doing. There were technical questions: ‘How did you record the sound?’, ‘What kind of camera did you use?’ and ‘How did you do the landscape shots?’; questions about film-making as an art form: ‘How did you decide who to interview?’ and ‘Why do you think this was a good thing to make a film about?’; and even questions about the Indigenous men and women in the film: ‘Why were their lives like that?’ and ‘What was their song about?’

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At some point during this class, we had started some real learning. Though we were no longer talking theoretically about interview techniques and camera shots, what I saw was much more important. The students were in charge of their own learning. They were directing it by their questions and had already picked up more than I could have taught in a presentation about camera angles. This was learning by doing, rather than learning by receiving. Over the next three sessions, Bernadette adapted her teaching to a model that seemed to work well. She would show them something that she had done or was still working on and then ask the students what they thought. They would then comment, ask questions, and offer suggestions about the film. By the third session, the students were making decisions themselves. Bernadette had brought in footage of an interview she had filmed, and the whole class chose which shots to use and how to build the film. This was evidence of how far they had come in just six hours or so. These film-making sessions with Bernadette were a microcosm of the whole Justice Citizens project. The involvement of someone from outside the school had made a significant difference. There was the novelty value of the students not knowing Bernadette and the fact that she was an expert in her field; she was someone who actually made films. These were attributes that made the students more likely to listen to her. It is also important to note how the students changed the focus of these sessions with Bernadette; making them less like traditional lessons and more like workshops was vital. As in Justice Citizens, Bernadette’s emphasis was on doing something, rather than learning about it; the students could practise with real footage. I believe this ‘hands-on’ approach meant more to them than hours of theory.

References Curriculum Corporation. (1998). Discovering democracy: Using the primary kit. Melbourne: Curriculum Corporation. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (1974). Education for critical consciousness. London: Continuum Books. Mellor, S. (2003). Solving some civics and citizenship education conundrums. Retrieved from http:// www.curriculum.edu.au/cce/default.asp?id=9318. Nicoll, K., Fejes, A., Olson, M., Dalhstedt, M., & Biesta, G. (2013). Opening discourses of citizenship education: A theorization with Foucault. Journal of Education Policy, 28(6), 828–846. O’Loughlin, M. (1997). Education for citizenship: Integrating knowledge, imagination, and democratic dispositions. Forum of Education, 52(2), 24–33. Shermis, S. S., & Barth, J. L. (1982). Teaching for passive citizenship: A critique of philosophical assumptions. Theory and Research in Social Education, X(4), 17–37.

Chapter 10

Student and Teacher Attitudes to Civics and Citizenship Education

Abstract This chapter describes the different attitudes of students and teachers towards civics and citizenship education. Drawing on interviews conducted as part of Justice Citizens, it describes the challenges of standardised testing, the teaching of citizenship through form and informal curricula, and the presence of authoritarian approaches in the school environment.

1 Introduction In the previous chapter, I focused on the various understandings adults and students expounded of what constitutes active citizenship. In this chapter, I shift the focus from conceptualising about active citizenship and how it might be practised, and instead focus on understandings about how to approach teaching and learning for active citizenship.

2 The Classroom Reality of Citizenship Education Being Delivered Through Formal Curriculum and Explicit Instruction The notion of civics and citizenship education as per government directives from ACARA and previously as part of Discovering Democracy was one that elicited sobering responses. In some cases, teachers only vaguely acknowledged that there was a requirement for civics and citizenship education across Key Learning Areas (KLAs). Then there were teachers who were aware of how citizenship learning was embedded across KLAs, but only paid lip service to them—seeing them as an ‘extra’ to core curriculum. Only a small group of teachers were knowledgeable and able to discuss how they tried to draw in civics and citizenship elements into different subjects.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Heggart, Activist Citizenship Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4694-9_10

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The first group constructed civics and citizenship education as an extra component to their teaching, and one that was often seen as optional. NICK H: Not really. It always, to me, felt like just a tack-on to the end. Even when I was going through school, we were never specifically taught civics and citizenship. Our subjects were history and geography. They were never civics and citizenship. It wasn’t until we got to these exams that we went, what is civics and citizenship? I remember feeling this when I was a student, oh this is just something that doesn’t stand as a separate entity, it must just be a part of it that I would be covering as part of this exam. The fact that Nick, a teacher, in the excerpt above, reflects back upon his own previous experience as a student—and not as a teacher—is particularly telling. It suggests that, despite his training to work as a Human Society and Its Environment (HSIE) teacher in NSW, civics and citizenship education has been conspicuously absent. This shows the way that civics and citizenship education, despite its important status as described by the Melbourne Declaration, has been marginalised. Ian, an older, more experienced teacher, when asked what he knew about the civics and citizenship education requirements, responded: IAN: Very little. If it was just presented as a heading on a page and what it actually entails, umm, but I could imagine I’m involved in um… some small way with developing a lot of elements of what you go in with, know what you mean. I’ve never had it at a PD, never talked about that, never had it presented as, this is a goal for our school, coming down from the executive. Ian explains that he has never had any kind of PD (Professional Development) for citizenship education. In fact, as far as he’s concerned, it has never been talked about at a whole school level. This clearly shows the gap between the Federal Government’s rhetoric about the importance of developing an active and informed citizenry, as announced in the Melbourne Declaration, and the reality at the basic classroom level, where a commitment to civics and citizenship education appears to be optional, at best. However, this is not to say that teachers are not concerned with developing active citizenship through different projects, and do this in a variety of different ways, regardless of the formal directives. Indeed, both Nick and Ian could describe at length projects involving students that they had undertaken that they felt encouraged active citizenship. Nick described a recreation of World War I that he had taken part in and directed. He felt that this was an example of active citizenship because it was an effort to encourage students to consider their position on Australia’s overseas military involvement. Ian was able to explain how his work regarding sustainability was so important for active citizenship; for him, part of active citizenship was ensuring that the environment’s resources were used in a sustainable way.

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3 Implementing Citizenship Education Through Informal Curriculum Strategies and Implicit Istrcution Of course, civics and citizenship education is a broad endeavour, and conceivably teachers might be involved in teaching civics and citizenship education values and knowledge without being conscious of it. Indeed, part of the directives from ACARA suggests that civics and citizenship education should be taught in a variety of different ways that includes both explicit and implicit instruction. I quote Peter extensively here because this excerpt is a good example of a teacher ‘doing’ citizenship education through implicit instruction. PETER: I am in the classroom to enable these students to see they have civic responsibility. Civic responsibility is about this whole society, and this whole basis of our society, which is the environmental angle, needing to become the best it can be. KEITH: Can you unpack that a little bit more? What do you mean by society as a whole becoming the best it can be? PETER: I want the students in my class to go out with what I see as truly civic virtues. So, I spend a lot of time emphasising that when someone’s breaking the rule, and I don’t know who it is, I expect honesty to be the first response. So, if there are a whole lot of people speaking, I ask them to stand up because I am a huge believer in honesty. These guys with the Wivenhoe Dam, honesty is just totally central to any possible civic society. If people can’t be trusted, we are nowhere. This is a very big truth that comes through in one of the texts that I teach, because the texts, and this one is Macbeth and Son by Jackie French, she is totally convinced of the importance of the need to trust everybody, because everything breaks down if we can’t trust anybody and we’ve had so many examples, I’ve quoted a few there, that are so outstanding in the betrayal of trust and people in public positions lying, that that’s just got to be, I feel, dealt with in the classroom by the ways that I deal with it, by asking for honesty. But patience—so much of road rage and all the kinds of domestics and all the kinds of other social dislocations and dysfunctions come about because people have not got a peaceful patience about them. So, often in class, when the stress is on, and there’s a fair bit of misbehaviour, or a fair bit of frustration, I say to the kids, right, pens down, I am going for a walk. I am going for a walk past the palace of peacefulness in the forest of fun, over the lawn of laughter to the pool of patience and I am going to have a big dip in the pool of patience, I’m in the pool now. It’s so good to be in the pool now. I’m going to come out of the pool, dripping with patience, and we’re all going to be able to get along better because the stress on teachers and the modeling that they can show when the pressures on, is crucial I think to these students having an idea of a person who actually conducts themselves in a humane way and socially enhancing, socially creative, and I mean creative not just in the sense of bright ideas, but in the sense of creating a society in which

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people can be themselves and flow into their jobs and produce the best they can. The happiest workers are always the most productive, so these virtues I’ve mentioned, plus self-control, plus kindness, plus compassion, plus a sense of looking after each other, which is embedded in kindness and compassion, but actually taking steps to be of assistance when there are calls on our… on our best selves. To be our best self. Peter, a very experienced teacher, is clearly passionate and enthusiastic about the task of teaching young people to be active and informed citizens—or at least what he thinks an active and informed citizen might be. Peter doesn’t talk about being an active citizen; instead, he talked about a citizen’s civic responsibility and his role as a teacher to develop it amongst the students he teaches. This responsibility, according to Peter is about society ‘becoming the best it can be’. Peter then outlines some of the qualities that he thinks are part of this: honesty, self-control, kindness, compassion, assisting each other. Importantly, Peter doesn’t just leave these as ephemeral qualities; he clearly identifies that civic responsibility involves working to help others: ‘actually taking steps to be of assistance…’. This fits in with a lot of the ideas of critical pedagogy that have previously been explored in this book—and also with the principles upon which the project was based. It also sets Peter’s work apart from other programs of civics and citizenship education. These programs, especially Discovering Democracy, emphasised firstly knowledge, and then action as something to come later, whereas Peter emphasises the need for action to begin now. In Peter’s understanding (and, I should add, in mine too), young people can be active citizens from an early age, both within and without the classroom. Peter also makes a point about trust being at the heart of any kind of civic responsibility. In fact, civic responsibility begins with trust. Peter seeks to develop this trust amongst his students—both in student to student relationships and the relationships students have with their teachers. However, it should be noted that it is trust on Peter’s terms. At no point does Peter invite students into any kind of shared decision-making or engagement with the content of what he is teaching; those decisions are Peter’s alone to make. In this fashion, Peter characterises an older form of civics and citizenship education, in which such education is ‘done’ to children, for their own good, and they have little say in the matter. I have discussed this idea at length in the preceding chapters. The final point is that Peter, probably more successfully than the other teachers that I spoke to, was able to successfully link his own practice—implicit instruction— and the curriculum with the development of active citizens. In particular, Peter speaks about the texts that he uses in English—he selected Macbeth and Son specifically because of the importance it places on truth, which he feels is vital to the development of civic responsibility. In this way, civics and citizenship education becomes an overarching theme to all the subjects, rather than a single subject jammed into an already busy curriculum. Indeed, Mellor (2003) recommends teaching civics and citizenship in this way. Here is another teacher’s account of teaching citizenship through implicit instruction.

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OWEN: You’re teaching Ancient History in Stage 6—looking at Sparta and Athens, one being democratic and one being kind of totalitarian and militaristic state and looking at and critiquing their version of democracy and critiquing their version of authoritarianism. My thinking would be that even teaching Ancient History, again, that’s looking at civics and citizenship. Students learn about those things and then apply them to their world today. This is spoken as a Modern History teacher, but I don’t see the information of Ancient History as specifically very useful, but I see the lessons learned from that, about how societies function and misfunction, I think that is very important, as making them better, more active citizens. Owen is suggesting that the core values and knowledges of civics can be delivered through almost any content—in this case, he identifies the HSC Ancient History Syllabus—which seems odd, because Owen then points out that he is a Modern History teacher! Regardless, Owen feels that, in this case, modern society—and modern democracy—can be contrasted with the ancient societies of Sparta and Athens. It is telling, however, that Owen is vague about the way that this might be done. Ian was positive about the way that a school can act as a ‘training ground for society’. IAN: Yes, so I sort of see it as a natural training ground for society. Kind of like a microcosm of what goes on outside the school gates and it’s a very safe, relatively speaking, relatively safe environment where we deal with their own issues, their own present processes and our own consequences for actions and if they are fair and reasonable and the students learn about our little society here and know, can understand consequences are a result of the greatest good for the greatest number to create a stable environment and safe environment for everyone that’s involved in it, if those students learn that here, they can more readily make the transition to be a functioning adult in our society. So our role in that respect is pretty significant as far as I can see. Ian suggests that schools can provide an opportunity for young people to safely learn the ‘consequences for actions’. This is an important analysis of the role of schools— whereas Francis, as quoted earlier, suggests that students are resisting the socialising mission of schools.

4 The Contradiction Between Teaching About Democracy and the Authoritarian Environment of a School Another issue that teachers raised, and which has previously been mentioned in this book, is the contradiction between teaching about democracy and freedom in the authoritarian environment of a school. Some of the teachers that I spoke to were conscious of the disjuncture between speaking about rights and responsibilities (one

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element of the prescribed civics and citizenship curriculum), and the way that schools can sometimes work to hinder the rights of young people through rigid rules. For example, Francis, a Religious Education teacher, said (and I quote him at length here, because he makes an evaluation that resonates strongly with one of the starting points of this book): FRANCIS: Well, I try to make people familiar with their rights and their obligations. So there’s an understanding of what I’m capable of doing, so trying to foster a school community of learners, as opposed to having a sage on the stage or teacher-student kind of relationship, trying to establish that idea that they are the masters of their educational destiny, whilst at the same time realizing that, as a school, and my one limited experience in other schools would agree with this, we are a almost totalitarian environment, where many teachers and many students feel that the teacher has the power, and the students is a receptacle of knowledge, and they must absorb that knowledge, be that cup that needs to be filled, and if they don’t regurgitate that understanding, then they weren’t listening, not that they were unable to understand… really, there’s massive amounts of sensitivity around criticism of modes of delivery… And I think that affects the pupils understanding of citizenship—Why should I believe the outside world would be any different if my governing body, or the people that are instilled to protect and educate me are controlling me and are establishing methods in which I cannot have a voice. KEITH: So, effectively what you are saying there is that schools might talk the talk regarding citizenship, but they don’t necessarily walk the walk. FRANCIS: I think on a grand scheme, they… a lot of schools do a lot of things to try and make citizenship apparent. They do a lot of charity work, they do a lot of community stuff, they try to create this awareness that seems almost to translate into passive involvement. So, we want people to be aware of what’s going on, and we create an environment that says, yes, we do good things and we do good things for people in need, and yet, on a kind of one to one basis, we have students feeling a modified version of the injustice we are fighting against every day—the feeling of being not listened to, the feeling of having their rights taken away, the feeling of being prejudged based on the way they look, speak, think, dance, sing, whatever. Francis, in particular, seems to be conscious of the challenges faced by teachers when trying to teach students about civics and citizenship education. It is important to note that, despite Francis’ not being familiar with Freirean pedagogy (I confirmed this after the interview), he describes Freire’s banking model clearly: ‘many teachers and many students feel that the teacher has the power, and the student is a receptacle of knowledge, and they must absorb that knowledge, be that cup that needs to be filled…’. Francis is conscious of the way that even his attempts to be a liberating force for students is trapped within the institutional oppression created by the systemic schooling system.

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Crucially, Francis extends this criticism by linking it to ways that young people might think about their future: ‘Why should I believe the outside world would be any different if… the people that are instilled to protect and educate me are controlling me and are establishing methods in which I cannot have a voice’. This perception of civics and citizenship education was one that I had realised during my own work in education and was one of the primary reasons for the development of Justice Citizens; a recognition that, in education, young people often are denied a chance to speak, much less speak about the things that are important to them. In the current model of civics and citizenship education, young people are silenced by having little or no control over the curriculum. Furthermore, in most classrooms, they are denied the choice of how they might learn, and certainly what they are going to learn. According to Francis, this denial of student voice is not, for the most part, deliberate. Francis gives credence to whole school and informal education activities that do try to generate civic awareness and understanding. In later parts of the interview, he identifies a number of these: fundraising for charitable causes, education ‘weeks’ like ‘refugee week’ or ‘sustainability week’ and school groups like social justice committees and environmental action groups. However, for Frances, at least, these lead to ‘passive involvement’. Francis extrapolates why this might be the case: ‘one a kind of one to one basis, we have students feeling a modified version we are fighting against every day - the feeling of being not listened to, the feeling of having their rights taken away, the feeling of being pre-judged…’. According to his logic, one of the reasons why civics and citizenship programs—whether they are called that or not—often fail is because young people cannot find ways to express themselves within the school environment and hence, they fail to see the purpose of any activity related to civics and citizenship. The experience that students have at school is diametrically opposed to the goals.

5 The Challenge of Doing Citizenship Education with the Intensification of Standardised Testing The school counsellor, Shane, explained other problems that teachers faced when trying to develop active and informed citizens amongst their students: SHANE: Where I struggle a little bit with the current educational climate, where there is such a focus on test results, credentialing and measuring gains that are what I see as only a very very small aspect of the person. Um.. That’s not to say that I don’t think those things are important. I do think… points of exit from school are really important places to be aiming, but we seem to have lost a fair bit of the other part of the discourse, which is around the social emotional, spiritual aspects of development, as a school, we are expected to promote. It’s almost as though those things have been relegated where they are going to be learned by osmosis, rather than

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intentionally. I’m kind of aware that we need to become more intentional about those things, again. Other teachers I interviewed expressed a similar concern, namely that a lot of their time was taken up by preparing for standardised testing. Since 2000, students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 undertake the NAPLAN assessments each May. Schools devote time to preparing for this. Shane says that civics and citizenship is ‘part of the discourse’ that we have lost since the new testing era. He explains that the ‘social emotional, spiritual aspects of development’ which schools are expected to promote, have been left behind in the increased focus on examination results. Shane also recommends teaching civics and citizenship directly, rather than allowing it to happen by osmosis.

6 Student Experiences of Learning Active Citizenship There have been calls (Nicoll et al. 2013) for more empirical research on student discourses relating to civics and citizenship education. Student voice has been marginalised by many of the policymakers involved in civics and citizenship education, and also by academics, although there are notable exceptions (see the work of Holdsworth 2007, 2013, for example). It is worth nothing that many of these exceptions have grown out of the demands, like those of Nicoll et al. (2013) for more student voice; as such, they are relatively recent phenomenon. The civics and citizenship experience of the average student is extremely patchy, and reflective more of their own interests and the specific knowledges of their teachers, rather than any ordered or structured program (like Discovering Democracy). Students are more likely to represent citizenship as being about ‘belonging’ or being a part of something, rather than talk in terms of rights and obligations. For example, Nick, who was slightly older than most of the other students (he was 17 at the time of Justice Citizens), explained that he was a little bit surprised when he saw civics and citizenship on the exam cover sheet of the School Certificate examination: NICK: We were never specifically taught civics and citizenship. Our subjects were history and geography. They were never civics and citizenship. It wasn’t until we got to these exams that we went, what is civics and citizenship? I remember feeling this… oh this is just something that doesn’t stand as a separate entity. Nick is mirroring some of the feelings described by teachers; specifically, he recognises the fact that, for both teachers and students, civics and citizenship is held in much lower regard than the other subjects like History and Geography, and is often subsumed within those two subjects. This is part of the confusion of civics and citizenship education in New South Wales. Despite it having a syllabus and curriculum, it is usually taught as part of History and Geography, to the extent that students don’t even realise that it is a part of the curriculum. The first experience that students have of

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Civics and Citizenship, as a discrete subject, is often in the examination. In fact, Nick goes even further than that—he struggles to recall any specific incidence of Civics and Citizenship being taught in his school career to that point. This evidence starkly highlights the ambivalent nature of many teachers towards Civics and Citizenship education—and it is clear, from Nick’s response, that this ambivalent approach is mirrored in students’ perceptions, too. Nick continues in a similar vein when he is asked to explain what he understands ‘active citizen’ to mean: NICK:

I feel that especially knowing a lot of the people that I am friends with who are between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six, there are only a select few—I could count on two hands, maybe one hand, the people that I would consider, to fit this model of active citizenship, and you know, participate in the democratic process in a legitimate, I shouldn’t say legitimate but I mean in a… KEITH: Meaningful NICK: Yeah, meaningful way. Although Nick doesn’t go on to explain what he means by participating in the democratic process in a legitimate fashion, one might imagine that he is speaking about the more standard models: behaviours like voting and so on, rather than more extreme ideas like civil disobedience or resistance. Rather than define active citizenship, Nick explains that he doesn’t know anybody that he would consider to be an active citizen. His stumbling and hesitancy over the meaning of the word ‘legitimate’ is interesting, too. I believe Nick is at a point in his life where he is beginning to question what he has always been told, and this uncertainty is expressed in doubt over what he has previously considered to be legitimate behaviour. As the interview progressed, Nick actually developed a sophisticated definition of active citizenship, using terms like ‘participatory’ and ‘community involvement’ to define what he meant. This suggests that, despite the limited nature of civics and citizenship education that he has experienced in school, he has nevertheless gained a minimal understanding of the democratic process—at least at some level. In addition, he has become more critical of the process, too.

7 Even Explicit Citizenship Education Is Not Foregrounded Of course, not all students were as descriptive as Nick. Some students, like Maddy, were honest about their ignorance in regard to Civics and Citizenship: KEITH:

Okay, good. Um. Now, you’re in year 9, and you’re doing a subject called Australian History and Geography. Did you know that it’s actually three subjects, it’s actually Australian History, Australian Geography and Civics and Citizenship? MADDY: No. I’ve never heard that.

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KEITH:

Not many people do know that, but there’s actually three subjects combined intoone. What is civics and citizenship? MADDY: I have no idea. Maddy actually felt quite bad during this line of questioning: like she was letting her teachers down by not knowing the answers. Her lack of knowledge about civics and citizenship actually caused her no small amount of embarrassment. And: KEITH:

I want to get back to what you said about Australian history. Now, did you know that the course you were doing is actually called Australian History, Australian Geography, Civics and Citizenship? LACHLAN: No, I didn’t. I knew about the History and Geography. KEITH: Never heard of the Civics and Citizenship bit? LACHALAN: No. Other students made valiant efforts to describe what this subject might be about, often in vain KEITH: So, on your school certificate—if we still did that—it would actually be different subjects. Australian History, Australian Geography, Civics and Citizenship. TUESDAY: Really? KEITH: Yep. Do you remember learning about Civics and Citizenship? TUESDAY: Sort of. KEITH: What did you learn? TUESDAY: Ah… you know. About being a citizen and stuff. Rights and responsibilities. KEITH: Can you remember much of it? TUESDAY: Not really. This might seem like a disappointing result, but I feel that it is a telling example of how civics and citizenship education is dominated by other subjects within the school setting. A similar example is shown in the way that, for students at this school, for example, there is no mention of civics and citizenship on their timetable. While Australian History and Australian Geography are allocated a slot, Civics is not even mentioned.

8 Despite This, Some Students Are Concerned and Active Citizens In contrast to the above students, with their limited knowledge and experience of Civics and Citizenship Education, one student in particular, Shanece (who was a current student, aged 15, at the time of Justice Citizens), was able to speak at great length about what learning she had about Civics and Citizenship:

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KEITH:

It’ll appear on your school certificate…not that we do this certificate anymore. Just thinking, you know, so we’re almost at the end of term one. Have you learned anything that you would consider to be civics and citizenship? Have you learned anything in History and Geography that might help you to be a better citizen? SHANECE: I have learned in history, in Australian history that in federation, if we didn’t have federation today, we wouldn’t be treated equally. Some girls or women wouldn’t even be at school. We wouldn’t learn anything, we wouldn’t know anything. Yes, I have learned from Australian history that…to be a better person…if we still didn’t have federation, we wouldn’t be treated equally and I wouldn’t have as much knowledge as I do now. So to me, I think to me that explains it a lot. Shanece’s answer in uncharacteristic in many ways, because, unlike other students that I interviewed, she is clearly capable of identifying the links between a subject that she is more familiar with—History—and the Civics and Citizenship content that she is covering within that subject area. In the example presented above, Shanece takes the first unit from Year 9 Australian History (Federation) and connects it with her own life and her own desire to be educated. She is conscious of the fact that Federation, and particularly the suffrage movement that occurred in Australia shortly after it advanced the cause of gender equity, and this has had a direct effect upon her life, even though it is more than a century after that time. This shows a much broader understanding of our present state, and, in a way that the teachers themselves failed to explain in the interviews that I conducted with them, suggests effective ways of integrating the Civics curriculum within other subjects. Regrettably, I did not ask Shanece about why she made these connections—had she been guided by a teacher to reflect upon gender equity in 2012, or was this a conclusion she had reached by herself? Later in that interview, I presented Shanece with the common depiction of ‘ignorant and apathetic’ teenagers: KEITH:

Okay, good. Sometimes young people, people your age are classified as being ignorant or not caring about political issues. Do you think that’s true? SHANECE: Not really. Because I know for a fact that everyone…a lot of people do care about politics and we do agree and disagree with some people. We actually do talk about who would be better to run our country like Julia Gillard or Tony Abbott or something. And we do put out points “why?” So I think that’s actually a wrong statement. So, yeah. When asked this question, Shanece responded with a fair degree of indignation. I was conscious of her desire to be taken seriously in this regard, and she really struggled to make it clear that she felt that the common depiction of teenagers as being both ignorant and apathetic was incorrect. Shanece was also determined to make it clear that she wasn’t alone—she specifically speaks about talking to others about issues that she felt were important.

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Although students were, for the most part, limited in their responses about Civics and Citizenship Education in a formal sense, I also asked them about more general topics related to civics and citizenship education. In particular, I asked students what they thought about politicians. Not surprisingly, students were much more verbose about this topic than Civics and Citizenship Education: KEITH: Okay and what about politicians in Australia? SHANECE: I think they also… they should also be in charge as well because they control our country. So, our environmental politician should be taking care of the environment, finding different ways so we don’t have so much pollution out there. KEITH: Are they? SHANECE: Lately, they haven’t been… I haven’t seen any news about them trying to help out in any way; our country especially. KEITH: Yeah. Okay. If you have to sum up politicians and politics, what kind of words would you use? SHANECE: I would say politicians…they are smart in some areas but they lack some areas like they should be helping our country, but then they kind of make it worse in some ways with our economy and everything. It was very bad in some years—some years ago, I think it was. But they’re stabilizing it so they’re working towards making it better. Politics; I think it is important if you would like to become a politician but if you’re not really looking to it, it’s alright, but I reckon you do need to know politics sometimes. Once again, Shanece shows a level of knowledge and involvement that shows the error in claiming that young people are ignorant and apathetic. In the excerpt above, Shanece quite accurately sums up the economic situation of Australia, having recognised the destabilising effects of the Global Financial Crisis, but also presents a critical representation of the political scene that would do some adults proud. She clearly identifies the contradictory nature of modern politics—while she recognises that some of the things politicians do are helping the country, she is also critical about other things that they are doing, expressing the opinion that they are making it worse in some way. Furthermore, Shanece doesn’t fit the label of the ignorant young person. Although she doesn’t profess to have any great interest in politics, she agrees that everybody needs to know a little bit about it. This suggests that Shanece feels that young people, indeed, everyone, should remain informed and aware about the political landscape. Other students identified particular issues that they felt were wrong, and these issues had often been discussed in the media recently. In particular, the issue of gay marriage was mentioned by students on more than one occasion: KEITH: ELLI: KEITH: ELLI:

Sure, sure, good. One more question: What do you think about politicians? The ones who come out and (inaudible) (15:23) and stuff. No, no, like Julia Gillard. I don’t like Julia Gillard. She annoys me.

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KEITH: Why is she annoying? ELLI: She made a law that gay people can’t get married. I mean, that’s stupid. Who would do that? What if she was gay? She wouldn’t be able to get married. That’s just mean! KEITH: So, you think that law is unfair to gay people? ELLI: Yeah. KEITH: And if you were a Prime Minister, you would let gay people to get married? ELLI: Sorry? KEITH: And if you were a Prime Minister, you’d let gay people to get married? ELLI: Yeah, which I’m not going to be Prime Minister because that’s just too much weight on yourself. Although there are some mistakes in Elli’s argument (Gillard’s government did not legislate against gay marriage, although they did not vote in favour of it when a bill was presented in the house), Elli’s comments do illustrate a number of interesting features of her understanding of politics and citizenship. Firstly, Elli is clearly interested in the current events of the day. She is aware of the arguments for and against the issue, and where the different parties stand in relation to that issue, and she has also thought through her own opinion on the matter. This is even more impressive when one considers that Elli is a student in a Catholic school, where the issue of gay marriage is still considered to be unacceptable, so Elli is actually disregarding the prevailing ideology in order to make up her own mind about the issue. Of course, there are other issues regarding Elli’s interview that do not appear as positive. Despite Elli’s apparently strong feelings about the issue of gay marriage, she doesn’t appear to feel the need to do anything about it. She has no interest in campaigning about the issue, and describes being the Prime Minister as being ‘too much weight on yourself’. Perhaps what Elli is describing here is the way less and less young people are involving them in political parties. Instead, young people are more likely to support a particular issue, as evidence here by Elli’s support for gay marriage. Some students, like Nick in the example below, were more ambivalent about politicians: NICK:

A lot of politicians are really good, but a lot of politicians are really bad. Some politicians are just competitive, and that’s all they ever wanted to be, and then there’s some politicians who love what they’re doing, and they want to help the government. And some politicians are really good, and some politicians are really bad so… KEITH: Do you think politicians can actually fix some of these problems? NICK: Some politicians can because apparently politicians earn a lot and they can talk to their party and see what’s like from each area of the minister, they can talk to what’s been a problem around your area, and what can we do to fix that. And they can all team up and talk to everyone about it. In the example above, Nick is displaying knowledge of the fractured political scene in Australia. While he acknowledges that some politicians are good, he also recognises

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that some are really bad. At the time of Justice Citizens, there had been a lot of discussion about ‘career’ politicians—people who had never been anything except a politician in their working life. Nick is trying to delineate between these ones—who he argues are just competitive and bad—and other politicians who ‘love what they’re doing’. Nick also, unconsciously it appears, links social change as delivered by politicians with how much money they earn. This is interesting because it seems to suggest that Nick is aware that, in modern Australian society, it is often money that leads to social change in a visible sense, and hence politicians need to earn a lot of money. In addition, Nick identifies that social change requires a collaborative approach. He specifically emphasises the fact that politicians need to work together to improve problems in your area. He also emphasises the need to ‘talk to everyone about’ problems. This is important because I think Nick is making a claim (and one that would be supported by a lot of scholars) that deliberative communication is essential to civic life and democracy. As mentioned earlier, the students who were interviewed generally responded more knowledgeably to a particular issue than a political figure. For example, Maddy is capable of talking about Sorry Day (a day of national apology for the mistreatment of indigenous people in Australia), but struggles to identify the party that the local member belongs to: KEITH:

MADDY: KEITH: MADDY: KEITH: MADDY: KEITH: MADDY: KEITH: MADDY: KEITH: MADDY: KEITH: MADDY: KEITH: MADDY:

Fair enough, I understand. Um… Now if I was to ask you, can you think of an example of a person who is an active citizen, doesn’t have to be anyone famous, might be someone famous, but someone that you know, that helps out in their community, in whatever way… Um. I think people like David Bradbury. They help out. Who’s David Bradbury? Isn’t he like the member of parliament, like the local member? For the current seat. Yeah, you’re right. I think, like, people that work in, like churches, like the priests and stuff are active citizens, and just like the general public. Yeah, okay. I’m interested, because you brought up David Bradbury. Do you know what party he belongs to? Lindsay? That’s the electorate, but is he Labor, Liberal, Greens? I don’t know. Don’t know. Let’s talk about politicians, in general. What do you think of them? I think they do lie a lot. Okay. Are you thinking about any politicians in particular? I think like Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott. I don’t think they are very honest people. They do do a lot of things that help countries, but… Can you think of any examples of things that they do? Um… Like Kevin Rudd did the sorry day. For Aboriginals, that made them feel like comfortable. Made them feel secure.

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Maddy, who is Indigenous, identifies an issue that she feels strongly about; her political interest is limited to where political affairs intersect with her own context. This is the reason that the parties in Australian politics mean little to her, but Sorry Day is important—even though it happened at least four years before Maddy took part in Justice Citizens. Some students did exhibit the apathy that is often used to characterise young people’s lack of engagement with civic life. In particular, Jade had no interest in politics, and was not aware of the way any decisions that were made by politicians would affect her. KEITH: JADE: KEITH: JADE:

The question’s difficult, or they’re difficult? They’re difficult. Why are they difficult? A lot of reasons I just can’t really answer that, but like, I think when the people get fined if they don’t vote for politicians and the things about politics are just difficult for people. KEITH: Do you find it interesting? I mean, you see that it’s in the papers everywhere, isn’t it? JADE: Yeah. KEITH: Do you…do you care? JADE: Not really that much because I’ve never really been into politics. KEITH: Do you…do you think the decisions they make affect you? JADE: Not really, not that I know of yet. It would be interesting to examine whether this was a product of Jade’s youth (at the time of the interviews with her, Jade was 14), which meant it would be alleviated as she grew older, as has been noted in other studies (Eckersley et al. 2007) or if her apathy would continue.

9 Conclusion This chapter has focused on the ways that both adults and students spoke about civics and citizenship education. While informative in its own right, this is only a part of my research. I was also interested in how Justice Citizens might have altered the view of young people themselves as active citizens. The following chapter (Chapter 10) deals with this topic.

Research Portrait Nine: The Premiere After about six months over the course of 2013, the students were finally ready for the premiere screening of their films. Since the start of Justice Citizens, I had been using this screening as a motivator for the students to keep working on the

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project, even when they were struggling. I had promised them that there would be an audience of community members to watch the best films. With the support of Penrith City Council and their Magnetic Places program, I had enough funding to book the Bringelly Community Centre. Although I would have preferred a real movie theatre, I had neither the funds nor the contacts to organise that. I was also aware that the students were not going to become professional film-makers over the 20 hours or so that Justice Citizens ran. Rather, I was hoping the unsophisticated films would speak to the youth of the film-makers and to the honesty of their concerns. Not everyone in the class produced a film. I was expecting to have about 25–30 films; this was predicated on every group finishing their film. However, I hadn’t taken into account that students would run out of time, or just lose interest in the project. This was one of the problems with the limited face to face contact we were having. In future, a shorter, more intense project would probably achieve better outcomes than the one-hour-per-week project that I had been forced to use in the first iteration of Justice Citizens. All together there were 18 films, spread almost evenly across all five class groups. The content of the films ranged from school experiences like bullying, school bags and teacher–student relationships, to much wider issues such as racism, dirt bike safety, domestic violence and environmental degradation Fig. 1 shows the films that were shown at the Film Festival. Many films started off in the context of the school, for example, a student accused of stealing a book from the school library, but then addressed issues present in many levels of society. I saw this as evidence of students seeking ways that the overarching theme of social justice applied to them in their own lives. When I spoke to the students who had not made a film, for most the reason was simply a lack of time. Many expressed a desire to finish their film, even if it meant reshooting or re-editing the parts of it that hadn’t turned how they had wanted, but they were unwilling or unable to give up the time to do so. Many lacked the autonomy to make decisions about their own lives—to stay at school after class or to give up time on the weekend—and so they struggled to fully commit to the project. Some students were disinterested in the whole project; they finished the course having done the bare minimum. These students fell into two groups. One group consisted of students who acted the same way in many of their courses: it was a trial to be endured, I had failed to convince them that Justice Citizens was different from their other courses of study. Having said that, Justice Citizens did succeed in engaging a number of students who were part of this group; in fact, one of the better films, Dirt Bike Safety, was made by two students who were constantly in trouble and whose continued enrolment at the school was in jeopardy. The second group consisted of students who had lost interest when they found out that there would be no formal assessment for the course; they would rather devote their efforts to a subject that was ‘important’. Amongst this group, however, were some high-achieving, motivated students who indicated that, despite the lack of assessment, Justice Citizens was valuable because it was so student-centred. After the films were submitted, I posted them on the school’s YouTube channel. I had already gained the permissions of all the students and community members for this to happen. Using a simple online form, I then asked students to watch the films

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Fig. 1 Films shown at the film festival

and vote for the one they felt was the best. I left the poll open for a week, and after more than 100 students had cast their votes, I was able to determine the best eight films. Despite some resistance, I had already insisted on the students introducing their own films at the festival. I wanted them to be proud of their work and be recognised for it. I invited all the film-makers to the film festival along with everybody who had been involved in any way with the project: council workers, professional film-makers and sound technicians, school principals, parents and community members. More than 70 people show up in the evening. A local Penrith Councillor, Prue Car spoke about youth initiatives, and the festival was opened in absentia by the then Federal Member David Bradbury, who, despite not being able to attend, had recorded his own short film about the importance of active citizenship. A couple of memories of the film festival stand out for me. The first is the gratification in the faces of some of the film participants. For example, one of the young women who participated in the teen pregnancy film made a point of speaking to Liz and Emmalee, the students who had made it (Liz and Emmalee actually made two films—one about refugees and this one about teen pregnancy). She was

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quite emotional—to the point of tears—as she expressed how grateful she was for the opportunity to explain her point of view. Liz and Emmalee were surprised at the response that their film had created, and pleased that they had provided this opportunity for the woman. The second memory is that nobody wanted to leave after the films had finished. I had provided a light supper, and I was hoping that there would be a general discussion after it, but there were still people talking about the films more than an hour after the last film finished. The conversations were often about the ‘what’s next’; that is, now that the students had made a film, what were they going to do about it? We hadn’t really talked about this in class, so the students were not prepared. The students were confidently talking to the other people in the room, and I was pleased to see them answering honestly and sensibly.

References Eckersley, R., Cahill, H., Wierenga, A., & Wyn, J. (2007). Generations in dialogue about the future: The hopes and fears of young Australians. Melbourne: Australia 21 Ltd & the Youth Research Centre. Holdsworth, R. (2007). Servants or shapers? Young people, volunteering and community. Melbourne: Australian Youth Research Centre. Holdsworth, R. (2013, December). We are citizens too! Connect. Mellor, S. (2003). Solving some civics and citizenship education conundrums. Retrieved from http:// www.curriculum.edu.au/cce/default.asp?id=9318. Nicoll, K., Fejes, A., Olson, M., Dalhstedt, M. & Biesta, G. (2013). Opening discourses of citizenship education: A theorization with Foucault. Journal of Education Policy, 28(6), 828–846.

Chapter 11

Justice Citizens as a Model of Complex Civics and Citizenship Education

1 Introduction Having both considered how young people’s engagement with civil society has changed because of a number of different factors, the failures of most models of civic and citizenship education in Australia, as well as the possibilities offered by alternative models, this book now considers Justice Citizens and why it proved to be an effective model of justice-oriented citizenship education. In the course of this chapter, I am going to describe the nature and structure of Justice Citizens, and then discuss some of the key findings from the data I gathered about the project. I will present these in the words of the students who participated in the program, alongside any analysis. I will also share, again in the words of the student participants, any criticisms or issues that they raised in relation to Justice Citizens. Having done this, I will then, in the remaining chapters of this book, begin to describe Justice Pedagogy, highlighting the framework that makes up this model, and how and why it addresses the concerns about civics and citizenship in a complex society. Firstly, it is worth addressing some of the methodological considerations that are present in this book. As you have read thus far, you will have noticed that the chapters have been interwoven with ten research portraits. These research portraits are one way that the data has been gathered and analysed. Based on my own participatory experience as the teacher delivering Justice Citizens, as well as the analysis I performed on interviews I conducted with students before and after Justice Citizens, I formulated these research portraits around what I found to be the telling or important moments within the program. The research portraits are both a description of what happened and an analysis of the event; in this way, they combine my developing understanding with a detailed picture of the context in which the event was happening. However, I have also, in this chapter, chosen to include excerpts from the interviews I conducted with students after they had taken part in the Justice Citizens program. The reason for inclusion of these interviews is threefold: firstly, © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Heggart, Activist Citizenship Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4694-9_11

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to demonstrate some of the pervasive attitudes held by young people and adults about active citizenship; secondly, to show how different Justice Citizens was to previous iterations of civics and citizenship education in which they might have taken part; and finally, to show how this newer version empowered students to work as justice-oriented citizens within the complex civil spaces.

2 A Brief Account of Justice Citizens Justice Citizens took place over six months during 2012 at a medium-sized (approximately 800 students) secondary school in Greater Western Sydney. McCarthy Catholic College (now Penola College) which was established in 1986 is situated in Penrith City Council, which has an Index of Community Socio-Economic Advantage (ICSEA) rating of 1001—a close to average rating for Australia. It should be mentioned, however, that the school draws students from a wide range of surrounding suburbs, including some that are significantly below average in terms of the ICSEA rating. At the time of my research the school had a teaching staff of almost 50. It also had issues with both poor attendance and poor academic results, with only 13% of students at McCarthy performing in the highest quartile for academic achievement, according to the 2011 NAPLAN (National Assessment Plan for Literacy and Numeracy) data. Justice Citizens deployed a youth participatory action approach to civics and citizenship education. All students in Year 9 (ages 14–15 years) were involved in the project, which ran for one hour every two weeks for approximately 20 weeks. Students were also invited to attend optional after-school events and workshops. A select number of students were interviewed before the project began and at the conclusion of the project. Students also kept records of their learning via blogs and journals. In addition, after each lesson teachers kept detailed field notes. During the Justice Citizens program, students worked in small groups to identify a social justice issue or any other community-based issue they believed was important, and then they made a film about the issue. The purposes of the films ranged from raising awareness to actual attempts to change society in a positive way, for example, by changing the way community members treated refugees or young mothers. Interviews were conducted with stakeholders to explore the various models, approaches and philosophies of education that could help developing active citizenship amongst young people. These stakeholders were teachers, principals, parents, students and exstudents, and people who worked in both formal and informal capacities with social movements and youth groups. The event culminated with a film festival supported by Penrith City Council and held at a local community hall.

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3 Students’ Attitudes to Justice Citizens According to the post-program interviews, for most of the students who took part in the Justice Citizens program, the experience was one that was very positive. In addition, students reported feeling that they had learned more in Justice Citizens than in other classes. Taken at face value, I recognise that this initial self-reporting by students does not vouch for much. What will provide more insight is to describe and discuss how the students reflected on the nature of the pedagogy—the teaching and learning processes. In fact, the change in both content (closer to the student experience) and learning style (more student-centred) was one of the features most frequently commented on by students. This student feedback was pleasing; it affirmed the research decisions that I had made in the design of Justice Citizens. The decision to alter the content and the pedagogical strategy was a deliberate one that I made when designing Justice Citizens. I wanted to embrace a ‘thick’ citizenship education program. This necessitated that the content had to be situated close to the students’ own lived experiences (which might not necessarily include the emphasis on the institutions and mechanisms of government so beloved of previous ‘thin’ citizenship education programs which students would have completed in other years), and also that the pedagogy I employed was student-centred and not teacher-centred. I deliberately chose to employ a participatory approach to teaching and learning, which led to significant benefits in student engagement, empowerment and learning. The participatory approach that I employed allowed students more choice about what they learnt and how they learned it than they had previously experienced. In contrast, other subjects that students were studying at school were often prescriptive, with limited options for students. I will now present student’s reflections on Justice Citizens’ benefits. Some students were content to say that it was good and leave their description at that: KEITH:

And the idea was that you researched an issue and you make a film about it. Did you enjoy it? MADDY: Yeah, it was pretty good, actually. In contrast other students were considerably more descriptive, and acknowledged their own changes in perception as part of Justice Citizens: KEITH: Okay, so what’d you think? SHANECE: I thought it was really good because it kind of gave us an outlook on like the problems in our world, in our society as a community. It kind of got us out there and asking people about racism, discrimination. Getting to know other people, we didn’t know who the other people were like the Sudanese that we interviewed and it was like – it was awkward because we didn’t know each other but then like it became easy, easier talking to them when we got into the interview a lot more. Shanece identifies a number of important points in her analysis of the Justice Citizens program. Firstly, she acknowledges the relevance of the program to her own life (‘it

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kind of gave us an outlook on like the problems in our world’) but also the fact that these problems had relevance to broader contexts (‘in our society as a community’). The participatory nature of the program is also highlighted as a good thing by Shanece. Shanece and her group arranged to interview a number of Sudanese students from a different school who had recently arrived in Australia. Doing empirical or first-hand investigation was new to most of the students involved in the program, and caused more than a few nervous moments, but ultimately, as expressed by Shanece, was seen as a good thing because it was about getting the students ‘out there’. This investigation of local issues in the community was an essential part of the program and one of the significant points of difference between Justice Citizens and more traditional forms of civics and citizenship education. To encourage the development (or further development) of a critical consciousness, it was important for students to, firstly, engage with some of the issues in their local community, but then to realise that they were capable of working collectively to change these problems. The discussion about whether the young people felt that their work made any short-term or lasting change is discussed later in this chapter. The students learnt skills related to making films and using software associated with the making of films but some students also mentioned interpersonal skills like facilitating discussion and interviewing: KEITH: ELLI: KEITH: ELLI:

So overall, impression of Justice Citizens? Good actually, I learned a lot. What’d you learn? That the Nepean River is polluted more than I would think and learned how to interview people and more confidence in myself really.

Here is another example of the differences in Justice Citizens’ pedagogy and content when compared to more formal citizenship education programs like Discovering Democracy. In addition to learning about the Nepean River (the Nepean River runs less than 200 m from the back of the school) which showcases the local nature of the content, Elli explains that Justice Citizens allowed her to become more confident interviewing people. This is a skill that is not often addressed in formal high school settings but it is an important life skill to develop. This is another justification for this approach used in Justice Citizens. Elli developed this skill when she interviewed a member of the local chapter of Nepean Waterkeepers, a volunteer organisation dedicated to raising awareness about the damage pollution does to the Nepean River. As part of this process, Elli was required to make contact with the group, arrange an interview time and location, prepare questions for the interview and then conduct the interview. Furthermore, there is a third and somewhat related note of interest in the excerpt above: as a direct result of Justice Citizens, Elli explains that she felt she had ‘more confidence’ in herself. It might be easy to ignore this small sentence, but the development of confidence was an important goal of the Justice Citizens program. If students are to be able to express their own voice in a manner which will be listened to by adults, then they need to be confident in doing so, and the program facilitated the development of this confidence.

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More than one student expressed similar sentiments to Elli. In particular, Jade, who was in the same group as Elli, felt similarly about the process of interviewing a stranger. I’ve quoted her at length below to show the way she reflected upon the process of interviewing a person and making her film. KEITH: JADE: KEITH: JADE: KEITH: JADE:

KEITH: JADE: KEITH: JADE: KEITH: JADE: KEITH: JADE:

What was your film about? It was about the Nepean River pollution. And so you interviewed someone about them? Yes. And you had worked on these questions and how did the interview go? I think that the interview went really well because the questions I think were really detailed, I guess about what the person does and how it affects our community and environment. Have you ever interviewed anyone from outside the school before? No. No? So, it was a new experience for you. Yes. A bit nervous, a bit nerve wracking? Yes it was nerve wracking. Would you feel confident interviewing someone else there now, now that you’ve done it once? Now that I have done it, I do feel confident in interviewing more people.

Jade recognises that there is more to interviewing people than simply asking the right questions. She is able to reflect upon the way that she had to undertake preliminary research in order to ensure that she asked the right questions, so that she got the right kind of footage for her film, which featured excerpts of the interview with a Nepean Waterkeeper. In this way, Jade is acting as both a researcher but also as a filmmaker—she is creatively preparing content about which she is knowledgeable into a package that she thinks will be informative and entertaining for her audience: this requires working and learning at a significantly higher level than other civics-related educational experiences. This finding has significant implications for civics and citizenship education. Jade has demonstrated that she, and one presumes, other young people, are capable of summarising and synthesising research of a high standard in order to generate new knowledges through her own work. In addition, they can summarise their findings and synthesise them into a new, creative project. For Jade, taking part in Justice Citizens was clearly a positive experience; unlike other subjects which might require a large research component but have little actual primary or empirical investigation. Justice Citizens had a combination of both primary and secondary research. In addition to the research component, Jade had the opportunity to develop valuable skills that are often overlooked in formal educational environments—and Jade becomes conscious of this over the course of the Justice Citizens program. For example, Jade is aware that learning to interview people— including the preparation and preliminary research outlined above—is something that

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sets Justice Citizens apart from other subjects. This ‘real-world’ element increased Jade’s motivation. However, more importantly than the increase in motivation, there appears to have been a shift in Jade’s identity. Jade explicitly states that she feels more confident as a result of having interviewed somebody. One imagines that Jade could, in the future, use that newfound confidence to interact with people in other settings. Thus, even something as small as having the opportunity to interview a third party, appears to have had a significant effect upon this particular student’s self-concept. There is no reason to imagine that the other, similar experiences of Justice Citizens wouldn’t have had similar effects on other students. One of the more common positives mentioned by students about Justice Citizens was its difference to other classes. This is linked to my efforts to make Justice Citizens student-centred and participatory: MADDY: Because it wasn’t just like sitting down like any old class and just writing lines. You were actually doing something that is actually happening at the moment and in our community. Other students matched Maddy’s thoughts: KEITH: JADE: KEITH: JADE:

Do you think it was a worthwhile experience? Yes, I did. Why? Because it was different to what we normally do. Writing and stuff. It was more interactive. KEITH: And it’s good that that happened? JADE: Yeah, because it opened our eyes and gave us more information. And: KEITH: Was it similar or different to what you normally do at school? JAIDEN: It is different to what I normally do at school because I usually just do work in class, but in this class we learn more about everything, more about Justice Citizens and more about the world. There are a number of important points raised by students in these excerpts. The first point is that, regarding their normal school work, the majority of students appeared to be quite apathetic about what they were learning and the way they were learning it. Although they don’t precisely say it, it is clear from the words that they use that, for these three students, ‘normal’ class work is boring. For example, Maddy describes it as ‘any old class’ where all she does is ‘write lines’. This is not the response of a teenager who is enthused about her learning. In a similar vein, Jaiden suggests that Justice Citizens is different because they normally ‘just do work in class’ (note the ‘just’), but in Justice Citizens ‘we learn more about everything’. I think the difference between ‘work’ and ‘learn(ing)’ is important—there is an element of pleasure in Justice Citizens—as if he is learning,

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but also, he is aware of that learning and its relevance to his life, whereas other examples of learning might be removed from his current experience. Jade suggests that Justice Citizens was good because it ‘opened our eyes’. This is an important reflection by Jade: she is saying that as part of the project, she became more aware of the inequality in the world—that is what she is referring to in the section on ‘gave us more information’. It is interesting to explore how this ‘more information’ translated into action by some of the students, and did not lead to action for other students. This is discussed in a later chapter. I’m going to leave the last word on student attitudes towards Justice Citizens, quite appropriately, to one of the students, Lachlan: KEITH:

Great, great. Well, I don’t have much more to say? Do you have any questions for me or anything else that you want to--? LACHLAN: Are we doing it next year?

4 Problems with Justice Citizens (Backhanded Compliments) Students were asked to reflect on their experience with Justice Citizens and the way they felt it had shaped their thoughts about active citizenship. The main questions that I asked during these post-program interviews were in relation to their films and the film festival that they had organised; that information has been presented earlier in the research portraits. In this section, I am focusing upon their criticisms of Justice Citizens. Of course, as positive as the students were about Justice Citizens (in terms of content and pedagogy) and the films that they made, they did also identify a number of problems with the program. Interestingly, most of these problems constitute what I would describe as an essential part of the learning process, and show a capacity for reflection that I was pleased to see. For example, in the excerpts from the interviews that I have selected and presented below, students explain that they were frustrated with some of their team members, or the fact that they felt that their films might not have the audience or the effect that they were hoping. Rather than being problems, this suggests that students are becoming aware of the limitations of their product and they are capable of reflexively critiquing their work. When students began to consider what they would do with their films once they were completed, they began to question whether their films would be successful in changing public opinion. A number of groups of students questioned whether the films they made were actually going to successfully engender positive social change. An example of this is in Tuesday’s comments: KEITH: Do you think your film is going to stop people bullying? TUESDAY: It probably won’t because people (inaudible) I16:48). People will just think and go, “Oh, yeah. That was a good film. What was it about?” Like they don’t really…like, they do…they listen to it, but I don’t think it’s going to stop bullying.

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KEITH: Okay, yeah. Yeah, that’s one of the real challenging issues, isn’t it? TUESDAY: It’s like a miracle. Tuesday recognised that a single film will probably have only a limited effect upon bullies—indeed, it would be a ‘miracle’ if a single film did have that effect. However, it is interesting to examine why Tuesday thinks that. She recognises that the film might not have the ‘cut-through’ necessary to really make people listen to the message— people might be dismissive about it. Tuesday is reflecting upon the cluttered nature of young people’s lives, where they are exposed to so many messages that it can be hard for any single message to have a lasting effect. Maddy expressed similar concerns: MADDY: I probably would have shown it to – probably at the school; like the kids in the school. I don’t know. KEITH: Just the kids at the school? MADDY: Yeah. KEITH: Why would you have shown it to them? MADDY: Because I know people are racist at the school and yeah they’re very stereotypical. KEITH: And you think the film might have changed their minds? MADDY: I don’t know if it might have changed their mind but I think they might have thought about it like maybe this is wrong what we’re doing and stuff. Maddy’s response is indicative of the growth that she underwent during Justice Citizens. Having made her film, she engages in a process of self-critique of the film, considering whether it has met its intended purpose. Backing this critique is a realisation that combatting issues like racism is not an easy task; instead of a simple solution, the answer is more likely to be found in an ongoing and protracted educational campaign—and Maddy is clever enough to realise that realising peoples’ own actions and the way they contribute to, in this case, racism, is a good starting point for such a campaign. In this excerpt, Maddy is demonstrating a burgeoning understanding of the mechanics of critical pedagogy and social movements. Jaiden identified some concerns related to the audience of his film. At first, he expressed some hesitancy about showing his film to his peers. In fact, Jaiden was much more enthusiastic about showing the film to older people: KEITH: And would you be proud to show that film to other people at school? JAIDEN: Yeah. KEITH: What about people in the community like people not your own age, people a bit older than you? JAIDEN: Yeah, probably more than those people. KEITH: Why? JAIDEN: They’re older. KEITH: You reckon they’d appreciate it more because they’re a bit older?

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JAIDEN: Yeah. Despite the fact that Jaiden’s film is about the difficulties faced by young Indigenous Australian men, in relation to crime and health, and took the form of an interview with a young Indigenous Australian man, interspersed with statistics about indigenous youth, Jaiden still felt that the film would be better appreciated by an older audience. I’m not sure whether this is a reflection of Jaiden’s own insecurity, or his recognition that the people with the power to change some of the societal dangers faced by this group are more likely to be older, and hence they are the ones who should be watching his film. Unlike Maddy before him, Jaiden might be recognising that, when attempting to address issues of inequality, it is necessary to speak to the people who make decisions. In Jaiden’s experience, these people were those who were older than him—and so his intended audience is those people, and not his peers, who are, at least to Jaiden’s way of thinking, disempowered from making decisions. However, Jaiden is also beginning to think of himself as a person who is capable of taking action. In fact, his decision about who to show the film to—and his determination to show the film—suggest that Jaiden is beginning to understand the way that he is marginalised in school, and his intention to be more of an active subject in his own education in the future. Shanece felt that the whole process of making the film was stressful: KEITH:

Fair enough, fair enough. What was not so good about the whole Justice Citizens project? SHANECE: The stress of making it. The stress of making the film because we had a little bit of time to do it and then it was due like a close timing and then the editing and pulling different things out and trying to figure out what’s important and what’s not important. Shanece’s comments are illustrative of the serious way she approached the making of the film. Her reference about there being only limited time is valuable (in later iterations of Justice Citizens, the allotted time was actually doubled to two hours per fortnight, although the program itself was shortened to 18 weeks) and helped update and refine the program. However, they also show that, for Shanece and the other researchers, the film-making process was both creative and an opportunity to further develop critical skills of delineating importance. In particular, Shanece mentions that there were decisions that her group had to make about what to include in the film (‘trying to figure out what’s important and what’s not important’). This is one of the key skills that Justice Citizens was trying to develop amongst young people. What is actually happening as those decisions are made is young people engaging in collective decision-making processes—a microcosm of democracy. Admittedly, this is only with a small group, and on a small project, but it does demonstrate the scalability of a project like Justice Citizens—and the way that the skills required of

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active citizens can be developed in more effective ways than in traditional teachercentred units of work. Shanece quite rightly identifies that collaborative decisionmaking is a stressful experience—something with which I’m sure a lot of adults would agree. Another valuable critique of Justice Citizens was raised by Jade. Jade identified that she felt uncomfortable when she discovered some of the issues related to racism: KEITH: That’s fine, that’s fine. Okay, good, good. Let me just make that I’ve asked all of the questions I want to ask. What wasn’t so good about Justice Citizen? JADE: The part of it that I didn’t like was finding out how people don’t feel like they belong in the community or the – like wherever they are, just because of their race, nationality. KEITH: And why didn’t you like that? JADE: I don’t like it because if it was me in their shoes, I would hate it. I wouldn’t like to be anywhere. KEITH: So you felt bad because they were feeling so bad? JADE: Yes. Although, at first glance, this doesn’t seem to be a criticism of the program as such, it does highlight a number of points. Firstly, it suggests that previously Jade had not been exposed to accounts of the way racism affects people in her community. In addition, she hadn’t developed any kind of empathy related to those marginalised groups. As part of the Justice Citizens project, Jade clearly did both of these things. Firstly, Jade acknowledges her own feelings of discomfort when she discovers the racism that is evident around her (‘I didn’t like finding out how people don’t feel like they belong in the community’). This would hardly be Jade’s first experience (at an intellectual level) of what racism is—throughout primary school and the first two years of high school, there are numerous references to racism in Australia’s history. However, what made this particular experience uncomfortable for Jade was the fact that it was linked to her own community—people that she lived with and spoke to regularly. This brought an immediacy to her understanding of racism that a purely textual study of the White Australia Policy (as part of Year 9 Australian History) would be lacking. Secondly, Jade clearly displays a growing empathy with those marginalised groups that she identifies: ‘I don’t like it because if it was me in their shoes, I would hate it’. This is as important as her more comprehensive understanding of racism, because it shows that Jade is also developing values and attitudes related to active citizenship (in this case, empathy). One of the primary concerns in critical pedagogy is that knowledge leads to a change in attitude or behaviour. I will discuss behaviours later, but it is clear from this excerpt that Jade’s attitudes towards people in her community have changed as part of this program. Of course, there is the issue that Jade was placed in a challenging position as part of Justice Citizens, and this might have caused her some level of anguish. This is a difficult position for educators; I believe that part of the role of a good educator is

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to challenge preconceived assumptions of their students—in this case, Jade might have felt that racism didn’t exist in Penrith—but by doing so, it is possible that this will cause a level of conflict and discomfort amongst students. In Justice Citizens, I didn’t shy away from this conflict—I encouraged students to work through it and discuss their thought processes in a supportive and open environment.

5 Making Creative Decisions All of the Year 9 cohort took part in Justice Citizens. This was a group of more than 140 students. However, not all of the groups (students created films in small groups) finished their films, mostly due to time considerations. I have selected eight films below to give the reader a flavour of the different topics and approaches to film-making that the students undertook. These eight films were those selected by the rest of the Year 9 cohort to be shown at the premiere. Students had a chance to watch all the films and then vote for the ones that they felt best communicated a message. The films with the most votes were selected for showing at the film festival. They were also uploaded to YouTube for students to share with other peers. The films are described below and then matched with students discussing their films in order to demonstrate the level of creative and critical thought that was a part of the film-making process. Students had a lot of freedom when it came to selecting a topic for their films. In the first stages of Justice Citizens, we had explored a range of social justice issues, through film and guest speakers. Students had conducted research into topics like homelessness, drug and alcohol abuse, racism and refugees. However, when it came to choosing the films the students had almost completely free rein; the only proviso that I placed on the film-making process was that it had to address the theme of justice—although I carefully allowed students to decide what they meant by justice and how it related to their topic and film. Originally, I had some concerns that students would not be able to find a topic that suited them; this proved to be quite wrong. For some students, the hardest part was choosing only one topic. In the end, a number of students made more than one film because they wanted to talk about different issues, rather than limiting themselves to just one. The first film shown was Yadav’s Journey. This film documented the experiences of Yadav, a refugee from Bhutan who was resettled in Australia in 2010. The film took the form of an interview, interspersed with statistics about refugees and footage from refugee camps in Nepal. Yadav spoke about both why he was forced to flee Bhutan and his own experiences in Australia. He also explained what life was like in the refugee camps where he was forced to wait for more than a decade. The second film was Teen Pregnancy. This film was the longest of the films at the premiere. It was a mix of clips from two interviews with mothers who had become pregnant while still very young. The film was particularly wide-ranging— it addressed the social impact of being young and pregnant, the way the mother’s priorities were forced to change, and also the way that their pregnancy had limited

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their educational and career opportunities but also the way that having children had made their lives more meaningful. The third film was Nepean Pollution. This film was different to the previous two in that it was much more overt about the message it was attempting to deliver. The students who had made this film were passionate about cleaning up the pollution in the Nepean River, and so were very definite about the purpose of their film. Elli said: ELLI: Okay, my film was about the pollution of the Nepean River and we had this guy come in from Nepean Waterkeepers and he studied for – he was studying the Nepean River for a while and we asked him some questions and he answered them; and then we put them into a movie with some pictures and information. And then it was done, you know, it was actually pretty good. Jade agreed with Elli: JADE: I think so because like if the pollution gets any worse, it will ruin the environment. It will ruin everything and because people actually like the Nepean River. They like swimming in it, going in boats but that can be ruined easily if people don’t recycle or don’t take part in the community. Indigenous Stories was the name of the fourth film. Jaiden and Daniel made this film. Jaiden said: JAIDEN: KEITH: JAIDEN: KEITH: JAIDEN:

It was more like an interview. With who? Chris. Okay, who’s an Indigenous man a bit older than you. Yeah. He used to come to this school.

In addition to the interview with Chris, Jaiden and Daniel included a number of powerful statistics related to Indigenous youth in Australia, encompassing details about incarceration rates, drug and alcohol abuse and also life expectancy. What was particularly powerful about Indigenous Stories was the way that Jaiden and Daniel wove the statistics about young indigenous men into the conversation that they filmed with Chris Miller. This combination of statistic and personal experience made the whole film much more powerful. Fear of the Unknown was made by a group of four students, and probably was the film that required the most planning and research. The students in question wanted to show their audience what the experience of being a newly arrived refugee in Australia was like. As part of this, they arranged to meet and interview a number of Sudanese students at a local library. Although the students filmed the interview with the Sudanese students (with their permission), they did not use any of the footage that they shot in the making of Fear of the Unknown. Instead, the students tried to recreate some of the events described by their interviewees, and then overlay their descriptions on top of the film. Shanece explains:

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SHANECE: The film I made with my group was about discrimination and racism and so we interviewed two Sudanese people. I can’t remember their names. I think it was –. KEITH: Doesn’t matter, I don’t want you to mention them anyway. SHANECE: Yeah, they told us their story and it was quite interesting. It was fairly different and we got to know that people treated them differently because they didn’t know English when they came here into Australia. And they did find it hard and people were teasing them and being racist. KEITH: Yeah, absolutely. So, tell me about your film. SHANECE: My film was, so we just did the interview and they just described how living here is better like some in some ways and how much they missed their home country. We also put in bits of ourselves, like in a school area setting and we just kind of made – we kind of put ourselves in their position and –. KEITH: Like a recreation kind of thing? SHANECE: Yeah, like we recreated their situation that they told us. And so, we kind of learned a lot from it. The students assert, and I agree with them, that this made their film more powerful than simply an interview, which had been their original plan. This shows a developing aesthetic sense from the students, as well as some evidence of design thinking, in that Shanece’s group have made decisions based upon how they feel they can best communicate their message. Nick explicates this in more detail: NICK:

Oh, well I’m in a group with Shanece, Lachlan, Patrick and we made a film about racism, and that. And Shanece was the – because she’s from – her nationality is Samoan, I think. We thought that she’d be a good role for it and the movie was about how she came to Australia. And it was her first day and there was a lot of racist comments going around the classes, in that – and how – then what troubles they found during the first couple of weeks, in that we thought they’re not being able to speak English, not being able to communicate with other people. We just wanted to find out – when we interviewed two Sudanese people and Shanece interviewed two people and during our film, we put their voices through it to make it feel more connected to it so that we tried to make each film part connect with the voice and I think we did in the end with Patrick, not being able to communicate with anyone and we put one of the voices through the end and it matched it perfectly. KEITH: Yeah, it did, it did. That was really, really clever. I was really impressed by you doing it that way. Domestic Violence was an unusual film in that it was made by only one student. The student in question, Corin, was determined to make the film from the start of Justice Citizens. She had recently heard about the number of children that suffered

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domestic abuse in Australia, and was determined to do something about it. In this way, Justice Citizens dovetailed nicely with Corin’s own interests and passions, and provided her with a space for her to speak about issues that she felt were important. Domestic Violence is a less than three minutes long but it certainly carries a significant emotional weight. Corin wanted to tell the story of Michael, a boy who was being abused. Rather than focusing on a sensationalist approach, instead Corin portrayed Michael (played by her nephew) in a room, writing in his diary about the abuse he and his mother suffered. In particular, it was the details present in this film that made it so powerful. For example, to make it look like Michael has been abused recently, Corin had make-up applied around his eye to make it look like a black eye. In addition, in Michael’s room, in the background of every shot, there is a collage of articles about domestic violence in Australia. Finally, Corin thought very carefully about the kind of music she wanted to include in her film. Dirt Bike Safety was a film made by Daniel and Brenton. They had struggled in most other classes, both being constantly in trouble. Both also had quite significant learning needs. However, both students quickly became engrossed in Justice Citizens, and, over the course of the program, they produced not one but two films. Dirt Bike Safety was an instructional film that provided young riders with tips on how to stay safe while riding on their dirt bikes (this is a common past time, especially amongst adolescent boys in the Penrith region). Daniel and Brenton were interviewed together as this was how they felt most comfortable: KEITH:

Yeah, yeah. Good. So just tell me a little bit about your film. Pretend I don’t know anything about it. DANIEL: Well there’s my film on dirt bike safety that I made while I was checking my bike. Brenton is in there too; he was checking his bike and then we done some wild stuff like ride around crazy. KEITH: And why did you pick that issue? BRENTON: Because it’s like a serious matter to–especially for Daniel after what happened with his brother. KEITH: Yeah, so you know someone who was injured? BRENTON: I know people who’ve been injured twice. KEITH: Do you think, let’s say people your age who ride dirt bikes and they watch your film, do you think they would think twice now? BOTH: Yes. To explain Brenton’s comment: Daniel’s brother had been badly injured while riding his dirt bike. Again, like Corin in the example above (Domestic Violence), Justice Citizens was able to capitalise on events in students’ own lives. Although dirt bike safety is probably not an issue that would appear on too many formal citizenship curricula, it is nevertheless something that Brenton and Daniel felt was important— and by demonstrating their commitment to share their knowledge about safety with others, it is clear that they are acting as active citizens. The final film that was shown at the festival was Bullying. Unlike the other films, that were often sombre in tone and subject matter, the makers of this film, Panashe

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and Tadi, wanted to convince their audience about the detrimental effects of bullying through the use of humour. In a way that demonstrated both an understanding of the way bullying can work in a school environment, and the multilevelled way that young people can interpret bullying, they created a film that had numerous ‘funny’ occurrences of bullying: the kinds of activities and interactions that they felt were common in their school, and were often treated as ‘harmless fun’. They then contrasted these events with a stark image of how bullying, in extreme cases, can lead to teenagers engaging in self-harm or even suicide. This film showed quite a significant level of awareness—the boys’ acting is deliberately clownish and over the top at the start of the film, and the audience is drawn into laughing at the foolish antics of the boys. However, when the final image is presented, of a boy having killed himself, the audience is left feeling guilty—and somehow complicit—in the actions of the bullying. This is a powerful way of demonstrating to the audience the way that bullying is often a series of small events that can have terrible consequences, and that we, as bystanders are often involved in these incidents, by laughing or even just observing them. Bullying was a popular topic amongst the students. I believe this is because it is a topic that is probably more closely related—at least at first glance—to their own situation than other topics, although this point of view changed as students explored some of the other topics. Jade was a member of another group who made a film about bullying. She explains her reasons for making the film here: JADE: It’s going to be about bullying. KEITH: And why did you pick that film – that topic? JADE: We picked it because bullying is a big issue a lot nowadays and a lot of people just get really depressed from it and almost commit suicide. KEITH: Almost commit suicide? JADE: Yes. KEITH: Sometimes they even do commit suicide, don’t they? So, have you seen people being bullied? JADE: Yeah, I have at my old school. KEITH: Yeah and have you experienced bullying? JADE: Yeah, a lot. KEITH: A lot? Wow, okay and so, that’s kind of the reason you decided to, do this film? JADE: Yeah. KEITH: So, do you reckon this film is…what do you want to achieve with this film what’s the point of doing it? What are you going to get out of it? JADE: To show people that bullying is actually a really big deal for like, the kids and even adults because it’s just like no one really cares it about that much.

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6 Becoming Active Citizens? One of the key goals of Justice Citizens was to explore how such an approach to civics and citizenship education might encourage young people to be more active citizens. This was one of the questions that I asked the students in the follow-up interviews at the conclusion of the project. For this reason, I delayed the second round of interviews with students until a month after the conclusion of the project. This was intended to allow the students time to reflect upon Justice Citizens and also to engage in any further activism related to their project. The exact nature of my theorising about this activism—and the development of what I have called justice pedagogy will take place in Chapter Eleven but I have included in this section a few of the students’ remarks that I felt were indicative of their feeling regarding the project as a whole. The students expressed a range of thoughts about their own active citizenship. I’ve quoted Lachlan, below, at length, because he sums up the feelings of many of the students that I spoke to. KEITH:

LACHLAN: KEITH: LACHLAN: KEITH: LACHLAN: KEITH: LACHLAN:

KEITH:

LACHLAN:

So, I mean we started off in our first interview. We talked about active citizenship and what is an active citizen? Are you being an active citizen? I think I’m making my start towards being an active citizen. And that was brought on in part by Justice Citizens? Yeah, yeah sure. That’s what kind of gave me the first thirst for being involved with issues I feel strongly about. Good, good and refugees is different from the community kitchen, which I think mostly focuses on homelessness. Yeah. Any reason why you’ve changed from–? I’ve got ideas. I want to kind of expand now, I want to–you know, I love working with refugees but I’m not done there. So, I kind of want to grow now a bit more, and then you know eventually to even bigger and better stuff as I get older. I hope you do, I think that’s very important. Let me think. Do you think you have a better understanding of how to be an active citizen, I suppose? Yes, I know now that you don’t, you know, it’s not hard at all to be active. You’ve just got to see your goal that you want to be, that you want to do, what you want to change people’s minds about and you just got for it.

In the period following Justice Citizens Lachlan was elected by his peers to the student representative council, where he worked hard to bring more focus to events like Refugee Week. As shown in the extract above, he attributes this, in part, to taking part in the Justice Citizens project.

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Research Portrait Ten: Critical Reception The Grace Hotel is in the centre of Sydney, about an hour’s drive from Penrith. Paul Vittles, then Chair of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in Australia and New Zealand (RSA A+NZ), which had contributed some funding to the Justice Citizens project, had selected the Grace Hotel for a seminar that I was to give about the project to Fellows of the Society and other guests. I had suggested we also invite some of the students who had participated in the project to speak about their experiences of Justice Citizens and show some of their films. The audience of more than 60 people was a mix of RSA Fellows, media professionals and educators, as well as some younger people. Amongst them were independent film-makers who had been drawn by my use of film in a school setting. I wondered whether the students would cope with the questions from the audience? Would their films be appreciated? Though the students and I were proud of their films, the Fellows of the RSA might be expecting something more professional and polished. I began the seminar by showing the shortest film. Simply entitled Domestic Violence, this film shows the effects of domestic violence upon a young boy. The film packs quite an emotional punch, and as it finished the audience was silent. I then spoke for about 40 min about the reasons for the project, the theory underlying it, and how the project had developed. Finally, I spoke about my preliminary findings about Justice Citizens, including my regret about the lack of evidence of critical consciousness developing amongst the students. By critical consciousness I meant an understanding that they are capable of interacting and influencing the world, that they have the power and the will to exert that power when making important life decisions, as well as an understanding of the influence of the media, amongst other bodies. This had been one of my great hopes for Justice Citizens, but nothing that the students had said in the follow-up interviews indicated an increased capacity for critical analysis of the media. I then introduced Nick, Lachlan and Emmalee, who spoke for about five minutes each. I had given them only a rough outline of what I thought they might talk about because I felt it was important that they speak genuinely about their reflections. They had also written their own notes, so I knew very little about what they would say. Their presentations were the highlight of the whole seminar. Each student spoke with confidence and passion about Justice Citizens, and I was pleased to hear them speak critically about their own participation and the participation of others in the program. I was proud of the way they spoke about how they had changed as young people because of the Justice Citizens project. For example, Lachlan and Nick spoke about wanting to join the Student Representative Council at McCarthy College in order to make the school more responsive to the needs of students and to make it a fairer and more equitable place. They also talked about the importance of the school recognising and welcoming students from minority backgrounds. What I was most pleased to hear about, though, was Emmalee’s description of the way that she now engages with media. During Justice Citizens we hadn’t talked much about the mainstream media in Australia, but we had worked on the students

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developing some skills that would help them interpret the media. As mentioned earlier, Emmalee and Liz had made a film about refugees, in addition to their film on teen pregnancy. This film took the form of an interview where Emmalee invited Yadav from Bhutan to consider why he was forced to leave Bhutan, what it was like living in a refugee camp, and how challenging it was making a new life in Australia, separated from friends and family. Emmalee spoke about how she had previously been influenced by the media. As a young person living in the Western suburbs of Sydney, she had heard a lot of political debate about asylum seekers who came to Australia via boat and were often vilified in the media. Many of these people were settling in the area and the issue was a key political battleground. Emmalee spoke quite candidly about these issues, exhibiting not only an understanding gleaned from her conversations with Yadav and others, but also a knowledge of the ways that the media had been shaping people’s perception of refugees. She mentioned the term ‘boat person’ and described its disparaging connotations, suggesting that it was fairer and more appropriate to use the terms ‘asylum seeker’ and ‘refugee’. Emmalee also spoke about the way that the Australian media often highlighted how refugees may be involved in crime but ignored people like Yadav, who was training to be a nurse and was clearly contributing to Australian society. In this way, Emmalee showed an understanding that the media shapes opinion not only by what it presents, but also through what it omits. After their presentations, the students and I took some questions from the floor. After one or two to me about the mechanics of Justice Citizens, most of the questions were directed at the students; as I had hoped, the guests had identified that the crucial value of the project lay in the effect that it had upon the participating students. A question that resonated with me was about the differences between Justice Citizens and other, more traditional lessons and programs. All three students replied that they liked the Justice Citizens approach because they felt more included in this method of teaching, and they enjoyed the ability to choose a topic to research. Emmalee also liked having the opportunity to pursue a topic that interested her, as evidenced by the fact that she ended up making two films. For Lachlan and Nick, the program allowed them to learn skills that would be more relevant to their lives than the skills they normally learnt at school.

Chapter 12

Using Complexity Theory to Navigate Roadblocks in Critical Pedagogy

Abstract The starting point of this chapter will be a discussion about some of the conceptual and theoretical roadblocks in much modern critical pedagogy. It will identify such challenges as the exclusion of other axes of oppression, such as race or gender, the lack of efficacy and the criticisms that critical pedagogy is guilty of the indoctrination it seeks to avoid. There will be a brief discussion of the idea of ‘conceptual borrowing’, before this idea is deployed in relation to complexity theory. I will then outline some of the key features of complexity theory and how it has been applied in a variety of ways in education. Finally, I will draw conceptual parallels between complexity theory and critical pedagogy as demonstrated below: • Naming the world—emergent learning • Grassroots organising—self-organising systems • Learner-centred democracy—distributed decision-making.

1 Introduction The previous chapters presented an analysis and discussion of teachers’, students’ and community members’ views of the Justice Citizens program and more generally about civics and citizenship education. This, in turn, builds upon the research portraits presented as excerpts throughout the book. In this penultimate chapter, I will draw together these ideas and themes and concentrate on what that might mean for developing a theory of civics and citizenship education. I will begin by describing the key theoretical features of the Justice Citizens program, including its experiential and student-led nature, its focus on action-oriented learning, the importance of school–community partnerships, critical literacy and advocacy for systemic change or participation in the public sphere. It should come as no surprise that radical and critical approaches to education, such as critical pedagogy, popular education and critical race theory were part of the inspiration for Justice Citizens. However, these approaches, and critical pedagogy in particular, are facing some theoretical hurdles currently; certainly, there has been © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Heggart, Activist Citizenship Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4694-9_12

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much discussion about the validity of critical pedagogy in terms of its focus on class at the expense of race and gender, as well as its efficacy in actually empowering students (Choules 2007; Ellsworth 1989). These arguments are important to the field and education as a whole, and have led to widespread discussions about different and correct applications of critical pedagogy. There are variations of critical pedagogy now that are urban in nature, or that directly address race, or that intersect with gender, as well as new theories that seek to empower marginalised groups. However, they are not what interests me in relation to Justice Citizens, and I would prefer to navigate past these hurdles than argue about what is the most effective and profound version of critical pedagogy. In much the same way that I am seeking to conceptually borrow ideas from complexity theory, and these ideas informed the development of Justice Citizens, I intend to do the same with critical pedagogy. Thus, Justice Citizens is the intersection between two different theoretical approaches to understanding education; I suggest that the union of these two approaches actually assists in strengthening the development of justice pedagogy. In this chapter, I explain how that might be done.

2 A Fresh Approach to Critical Pedagogy I will argue for a fresh approach on two fronts. Firstly, I propose to replace the terminology of citizenship education with the term ‘justice pedagogy’. It is true that I have made a case—and indeed, based much of Justice Citizens on the ideas present in ‘thick’ citizenship education; I remain critical of ‘thin’ approaches. But the terminology of ‘citizenship education’ carries too much baggage and continues to be closely aligned to thin approaches—especially when combined with ‘civics’. Alternatively, the term ‘justice pedagogy’ is more direct and powerful and more suitable for advocating for more thick approaches. It foregrounds the notion of justice as being central to this approach to education. Of course, this begs the question, why not use the term ‘critical pedagogy’ which, after all, has a long and rich lineage? This is the second front I think needs refreshing. Critical pedagogy is also tied down with baggage which I have mentioned briefly above, and will further elaborate on shortly as I suggest how combining them with complexity theory, as discussed earlier, will help to navigate these roadblocks. The term ‘justice pedagogy’ has the advantage of going beyond the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory and being able to align itself with new theoretical perspectives, namely Complexity Theory and Complexity Pedagogy. I began this book with a description of some of the key features of current civil engagement and social movement activism. In doing so, I considered the nature of youth-centred and youth-led social movements, such as March 4 Our Lives and the School Strike 4 Climate. I also explored the liberatory and autonomous communicative capacity of social media. In addition, I discussed the nature of youth engagement, and how it might have changed over the last few decades, propelled by mobile technology and the internet. As I explored these ideas, I drew out three key themes, related to complexity theory:

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emergent learning, self-organising systems and distributed decision-making. Below, I link these themes to some concepts in critical pedagogy, and comment on how they offer new understandings of critical approaches to education. In order to do this, I will begin by discussing the key features of Justice Citizens, and how they are related to each other.

3 Features of Justice Citizens In the previous chapters and the research portraits, I have described six features that enabled the higher level and emancipatory learning that took place in the Justice Citizens program. The features, experiential education, student-led learning, action-oriented learning and participation in the public sphere, school–community partnerships, critical literacy and advocacy for systemic change are depicted in Fig. 1.

3.1 Experiential Education A key feature of Justice Citizens was the emphasis placed upon experiential education. Walker and Anthony describe experiential education as ‘the process of actively engaging students in an experience that will have real consequences’ (1992, p. 1). Fig. 1 Features of Justice Citizens

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This is not an original idea in education—progressive educators like Dewey (1938) argued in favour of such an approach to education, suggesting that students are more likely to learn if they are engaged in the subject matter, and one way to do that is by grounding the learning in real-world physical experiences. Experiential education has long had links to the progressive education movement, and is generally (and perhaps stereotypically) understood to mean learning by doing, rather than by passively storing information. As such, it has led to approaches to education like service learning, outdoor education, notably Kurt Hahn and Outward Bound (James 1990), action learning and other examples. What most of these approaches have in common is the idea of students working (often together) on a project or mission with real-world implications, and by undertaking this work, learning the skills and knowledge that is required. Calkins (1991, p. 154) writes: If we asked our students for the highlight of their school careers, most would choose a time when they dedicated themselves to an endeavour of great importance… On projects such as these, youngsters will work before school, after school, during lunch. Our youngsters want to work hard on endeavours they deem significant.

A crucial part of experiential learning is the requirement to undertake reflection throughout the process—something that Freire (1970) would describe as praxis. Richard Kraft and Mitchell Sakofs (1988) suggest that it is only through this process that students develop new skills, attitudes and ways of thinking. This process was important for Justice Citizens. Students throughout the course were supported to learn by doing; that is, the learning took place through the means of film-making projects that had application to the students’ own experiences and were of value beyond the school context. Within the Justice Citizens program, students were required to be active learners. They were, in the first instance, required to make decisions about their projects (this is linked to student-led learning, discussed below), to make contacts with groups outside of the school environment (again, discussed below), to conduct interviews with these groups, and then to create a film about their findings, with the aim of changing community beliefs. This process was quite distant from the traditional day-to-day model of didactic teaching and learning that students had previously experienced in their school lives for two reasons. Firstly, it sought to develop transferable skills amongst students of the kind that can be neglected in formal academic environments. For example, the students making the films about environmental degradation in the Nepean River were required to make contact via telephone with the Nepean Waterkeepers, arrange a meeting and then conduct and film an interview—all of which they had never done before in the course of their schooling. Secondly, the students also chose topics that were grounded in their own experiences and were relevant to their lives in Penrith. This is important because, just like Freire’s work with literacy in Brazil, these topics were seen as relevant to the students—as opposed to some of the other material they were required to learn. It is worth noting that some of the topics they chose to explore— domestic violence, racism, teenage pregnancy—are not explicitly included in any great detail in the Australian Curriculum. Didactic teaching strategies—lectures, note-taking, comprehension activities—were almost completely absent from Justice

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Citizens, and much more emphasis was placed on active learning based on discussion, collaboration and investigation. (This is not to suggest that explicit instruction should necessarily be seen as not valuable.) In addition, in a marked difference to almost every other subject studied by the students, there was no formal assessment, nor were there any grades assigned to the course. This was particularly challenging for some of the students who had become inured to seeing grades as the only acceptable measure of learning. Instead, the only requirement of the course was to complete the film and this was a requirement that I didn’t need to enforce, as the groups were enthusiastic about both completing and then showcasing the film to a wider audience.

3.2 Student-Led Learning A second feature that distinguished Justice Citizens from more traditional educational programs was its emphasis on allowing students to make decisions about their learning. Again, this is hardly a new idea in education, but it is an idea that continues to not get much traction in Australian schools. Formal schooling is becoming more, rather than less, heavily regulated by credentialing bodies, including the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL), the New South Wales Education Standards Authority (NESA) and the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), all of which govern items like school curricula, professional standards for teachers, and teaching and learning materials. These requirements reach down to frontline classroom practices regarding lesson planning and much more. While teachers might, and often do, try to encourage some level of student decision-making within the classrooms, this is often a token effort, hampered as they are by external requirements that are imposed upon them. It is not my intention to critique any of these approaches, but it is important to note that such approaches often remove students from the locus of decision-making, and place them as subjects within the education equation, rather than equal participants. Although Justice Citizens was only able to work at the edges of this overarching system (by using time that was otherwise unassigned to formal curriculum, as well as students’ own time outside of regular school hours), I was conscious that I wanted students to have as much control over their learning as was safe and reasonable—and within the guidelines the school had allowed me. This was realised through the increased emphasis I placed on student choice and participation. When designing the course, I intently provided opportunities for students to decide how they wanted to proceed. At the most basic level, this was present in the fact that students could choose who they worked with, and also what topic they were going to research. More profoundly, students were also able to make quite complex decisions about how they were going to present their research via film—whether it was to be an interview, a recreation or something else entirely. This, of course, is not to say that I abandoned any pretence of structure within the classroom. Just as Freire (1970) had structured activities for the teaching of literacy in the culture circles he used, I developed a range of activities that I deployed, especially

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in the early stages of Justice Citizens. This included stimulus material, presentations by visitors and staged debates between groups of students. However, I was alive to the possibilities of the lesson going in a completely different direction to that which I had anticipated, and, rather than attempting to redirect students back to the lesson plan, I allowed students to pursue this new direction—for a much longer time than I would have in a setting governed by formal curriculum requirements. I was conscious of making the decision to cede much of my authority as a teacher to the students in the classroom, and instead tried to see students as co-participants in the learning process, rather than objects upon which I was to work. This change in mindset meant that students had the right to explore topics and ideas that were of interest to them—even if that meant that the class moved away from my original lesson plan.

3.3 Action-Oriented Learning and Participation in the Public Sphere In action-oriented learning the focus is on taking action as much as it is on learning to take that action. Indeed, the artificial division between doing and learning-to-do is problematic, especially in the domain of civics and citizenship education. For my approach to action-oriented learning I draw on Ethan Zuckerman’s (2014) work about young people gaining the capacity to participate in the public sphere or becoming effective civic actors and Putnam’s (2001) empirical research and theorising about social capital. Zuckerman writes not only about thick or thin civic engagement but also about instrumental or emancipatory notions of ‘voice’. Briefly, Justice Citizens focused on developing the skills that young people required to have more emancipatory voice in the public sphere (and, like Zuckerman, I include the digital realm as part of this public sphere, and foreground its importance to young people). Emancipatory voice, according to Zuckerman, aims to change public perceptions by altering societal norms, and this is precisely what the films that students made were intended to do. For example, the film about teenage pregnancy was intended (and I think, quite effective in its mission) to change the audience’s mind about the value of young mothers to society. The film about refugees was meant to show the audience how challenging and scary a young refugee’s experiences at an Australian school might be—and thus engender a level of empathy that the students felt was absent from discussion in the public sphere. None of these films, in and of themselves, were about changing particular laws; that is, there was no defined end goal. Rather, they were seeking to strengthen voice; that is, to alter the public’s perception about specific topics with the intent of influencing public debate. Building social capital is key to strengthening capacity in the public sphere. Justice Citizens strengthened the school’s and student’s bridging social capital to create access to other actors within the public sphere; by interacting with these actors (for example, community groups, environmental groups, individuals and families). This had benefits for both the actors and the students. The students were able to leverage

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these connections in various ways. Firstly, some students, while they no longer had any further interest in the film-making part of Justice Citizens still wished to pursue their interest in the subject of their film. For example, the students who made films about the environment went on to join the Nepean Waterkeepers environment action group. This transition was made possible because of the involvement they had with Justice Citizens and the social capital they had developed through the program. Other students indicated that they were not particularly interested in doing anything more on their topic, but went on to make use of the skills and connections that they had developed as part of Justice Citizens for other purposes, such as becoming leaders in their own social groups, or within the school itself.

3.4 School–Community Partnerships While I had originally not planned much community involvement with Justice Citizens (beyond the contribution of Penrith City Council to the film festival) I quickly realised that such involvement was necessary, as I did not have the full spectrum of skills or knowledge to assist students with their research and film-making. For example, some students quickly outstripped my quite meagre talents when it came to film-making (script research and writing, camera work, and editing), and I was fortunate enough to be able to call on the assistance of a local freelance journalist, who led a series of intensive workshops for students. This allowed students to develop their skills in this area, but it also led to students developing connections beyond the school walls, some of which they used in their future endeavours. For example, a number of students, inspired by Justice Citizens, set about making their own films, in their own free time, about topics that interested them. While these new films did not have the focus on justice that the original films were required to have, it is possible that their interest in film-making was stimulated and developed through their participation in Justice Citizens. These films were shared via YouTube. Another example of where students utilised community links was with the involvement of the Nepean Waterkeepers. This is an environmental organisation that monitors the health of the Nepean River and associated waterways. A number of groups expressed interest in researching the environmental aspects of the local community, and this necessitated student making contact with, then meeting, then eventually filming with members of the Nepean Waterkeepers as they discussed river bank degradation. By working with this group, students had access to first-hand knowledge about the waterways, at a much deeper and more authentic level than I could have provided for them or they could have accessed by themselves. The examples that I have described above are not formal partnerships, but rather loose relationships of mutual benefit. Regardless, I think that they are ways of developing social capital that students can then use in a variety of ways: they can either use it to develop connections beyond the school boundaries, and leverage those connections for future opportunities, or they can translate the social capital they have gained through these partnerships into knowledge capital that they can deploy in different contexts.

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3.5 Critical Literacy Justice Citizens was firmly focused on real-world problems. I sought a way for young people to enter into discussions taking place within the public sphere about topics that were of importance to them. While the notion of a public sphere as a space where reasoned debate can inform and help shape public opinion can be traced back to Habermas (1989), the emergence of the internet and the digital age, and especially the ubiquity of mobile digital technologies has enlivened this discussion and led to a reconsideration of the way that people participate in the public sphere. Techno-optimists, like Henry Jenkins (2006) argue that digital technologies in the post Web 2.0 era will offer new opportunities for citizens to take active roles in their democratic institutions, and to wield more power in terms of their cultural and political environment. Techno-pessimists, like Jose van Dijck (2013) are more cautious, suggesting that, much like ‘old’ media, new media spaces are controlled by mega-corporations. While these debates are important, it remains true that young people in Australia are using digital media in ever increasing numbers, and they are using the media both as consumers and creators. However, I was—and remain—concerned that young people often have little opportunity to develop the required skills to thoughtfully and critically examine the internet, with a special attention paid to the inequality or injustice that is presented in those spaces. There have been concerted efforts to address young people’s behaviour online— but even these messages (often framed as digital citizenship) are limited in their application. They are based on a desire to keep young people safe, and are usually no more than a list of acceptable behaviour or conduct for online exchanges. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, I think that any effective digital citizenship program needs to include, as a central feature, an element of critical literacy; that is, young people need to develop the skills to ‘read’ the web in a way that allows them to firstly recognise and then challenge the dominant power structures and inequalities that are present across this digital terrain. Via Justice Citizens, I was seeking to model and develop a level of critical literacy with the students by encouraging them to confront both the prejudices present within online material and also their own prejudices about specific topics that they encountered. This was a part of Justice Citizens that was confronting for many of the students who participated. In particular, some of the students began, through an analysis of different forms of media that they consumed, to consider the way the media presented women, or the lack of Indigenous Australian representation online, and were concerned at the limited opportunities afforded to them.

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3.6 Advocacy for Systemic Change While activism is often seen as a word with connotations related to disobedience, violence and disorder (Kennelly 2009), for me it is a word that must be reclaimed by civics and citizenship educators if we are to engage in pedagogies that encourage active citizenship amongst young people. In order to do this, it is not enough to simply encourage young people to take part in causes that only address the symptoms of oppression, rather than the root causes of that oppression. Indeed, there is a requirement to actively campaign for systemic and institutional change. While it might, for example, be a worthwhile and beneficial exercise to make refugees and asylum seekers more welcome in your own community, such an approach will not, in and of itself, challenge the oppression or marginalisation that these groups experience on a systemic and institutional level. In some ways, such exercises might only serve to alleviate the feeling that we, as privileged people, should be doing something, rather than leading to any significant change in the relations of power between these different groups within society. Therefore, if one is going to encourage active citizenship, there is a requirement to help young people learn to challenge those systems rather than simply teaching them how to act within the systems that perpetrate the racism, sexism or other forms of oppression present within society today. Such an approach is more easily said than done; however, I think that there is potential in some of the ways that social media is being used to build powerful and effective social campaigning mechanisms. The key feature of social media here is what danah boyd (2014) described as scalability—the potential for social media to amplify specific messages far beyond the audience that they would otherwise have been able to access, and to move beyond the old broadcast model of one-to-many to a many-to-many model. These possibilities for increased audience volume and interaction, and the leverage that comes with it, is a powerful mechanism for encouraging systemic and institutional change. It would be remiss to suggest that such an approach is a panacea to social movement ills; for example, scholars like Zeynap Tufekci (2017) have identified that there are relatively weaker links between participants in social media campaigns than there are between those who have had long relationships and regular face to face meetings. Other scholars have described this approach, somewhat dismissively, as ‘slacktivism’ (Christensen 2011) or ‘clicktivism’ (Butler 2011). While there is some truth in their critique, I think a more measured consideration would also take into account the various social media mediated successes, such as the campaign for people to change their Facebook profile pictures to an equals symbol to indicate their support for marriage equality. Techno-optimists see potential in the ways that young people can use social media as a platform to shape public opinion and attempt to advocate for systematic change. In Justice Citizens, there was a modest attempt to explore what such an approach might look like. The students’ films were all published on YouTube, and shared widely from both the students’ accounts and also from the school’s social media accounts. While none of the films went viral,

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students’ films were exposed to a wider audience than they would otherwise have had the chance. As of October 2017, the total number of views of all the films was more than 1000.

4 Justice Pedagogy—A New Term for Critical Citizenship Education Critical pedagogy has been influential in the development of my approach to civics and citizenship education. The works of Freire, Giroux, McLaren and later generations of critical pedagogues are central to activist approaches to civics and citizenship education. I have described, as part of Justice Citizens, a tradition of critical pedagogy that is both centred around the learner and democratic in nature. Critical pedagogy has been drawn upon by other activist citizenship education initiatives, for example, David Zyngier’s RuMAD? However, critical pedagogy is in need of refreshing, as is the discourse of citizenship education in Australia and around the world. This is, as much as anything else, related to the drift in meaning of the original terms. For example, where once citizenship might have been enough to imply a level of active involvement in the affairs of the state, now politicians and policymakers speak about active citizenship, or participatory citizenship, or consumer citizenship. Equally, critical pedagogues now engage with a range of terms and conceptual influences, like critical race theory and Hip Hop pedagogy, for example, that can often limit discussion to definitional arguments and hinder the effective development of a critical pedagogy. In addition, critical pedagogy has acknowledged early failings in its vision regarding its blindness to matters of race and gender (for example, see Lynn 2004), and newer ideas of critical pedagogy must incorporate intersectional notions of oppression beyond class-based ones. In order to do this, new ideas, new language and new concepts might be carefully deployed in order to enliven a somewhat selfreinforcing conceptual space. While I am not averse to the ambiguity present in discussions about definitions and meaning, and indeed I think there might be benefits to such ambiguity, I am suggesting that by injecting notions of complexity thinking into the discussion about critical pedagogy, it is possible to approach the ongoing project of critical pedagogy with new ideas. In addition, by applying this new understanding of critical pedagogy to the complex problem of developing active citizens via education, one might begin to consider new approaches to civics and citizenship education.

4.1 Moving from the Linear to the Organic In seeking to refresh critical pedagogy through the use of ideas drawn from complexity theory, I am moving away from the linearity that is present in many traditions of critical pedagogy. Instead, I want to embrace creative, organic and

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Fig. 2 Connecting critical pedagogy and complexity theory

improvised approaches to civics and citizenship education, and it is for this reason that I find ideas drawn from complexity theory to be compelling. In this section, I am going to outline how three features of complexity theory (distributed decisionmaking, self-organising systems and emergent learning) share conceptual similarities with features of most traditions of critical pedagogy (grassroots organising, learnercentred democracy and naming the world) but also extend and develop them. By linking these two concepts (as shown in Fig. 2), I am recognising both the similarities between the ideas, but also acknowledging that the organic nature of the complexity theory concepts can extend the ideas present in critical pedagogy. Having established this, I identify the ways these concepts were present in Justice Citizens. Finally, I establish a structure to explain how the six features of critical citizenship education I described earlier in this chapter (experiential education, student-led learning, action-oriented learning and participation in the public sphere, school–community partnerships, critical literacy and advocacy for systemic change) are linked to the concepts of complexity theory, in order to explicate justice pedagogy. In order to facilitate this process, I have drawn on three key ideas of complexity theory: distributed decision-making, self-organising systems and emergent learning, and described how they might contribute to the development of a new understanding of critical pedagogy. It is important to note that my use of complexity theory is not intended to be a detailed analysis of the theory, but rather I am engaging in conceptual borrowing in an effort to explore the understandings of critical pedagogy and citizenship education, as well as to explicate what I am describing as Justice Pedagogy. In Fig. 2 there are two columns. The left-hand column contains concepts that are central to critical pedagogy. The right-hand column indicates concepts that are central to complexity theory.

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4.2 Distributed Decision-Making and Non-linearity Complex systems are characterised by distributed decision-making and non-linearity (Byrne 2014). As opposed to simple systems, where best practice is reasonably well established and often involves a hierarchical structure with a clear plan and direction to follow, complexity thinking requires us to conceive of learning spaces in a radically different way. This approach will assist in addressing some of the previous criticisms of critical pedagogy. In earlier traditions of critical pedagogy, even when it distanced itself from didactic teaching, much emphasis was placed on the role of the teacher, and especially the way she or he led dialogue or enabled participatory forms of deliberation. It is necessary consider that the behaviour of the system will be a result of the actions of a diverse range of actors. Critical pedagogy has also been criticised for replacing one form of indoctrination with another (Ellsworth 1989; Johnson and Morris 2010). By adopting complexity thinking notions of distributed decision-making and non-linearity, it is possible to move beyond the role of the teacher and instead begin to consider the behaviour of the whole environment, which will be a result of the actions of a diverse range of participants. Thus, classroom learning spaces need to reflect that knowledge and learning does not, as some would suggest, flow directly from the teacher or the instructor to the student (or vice-versa), who passively accepts it. Rather, it is a manyfold and multidirectional process, where learning occurs between the teacher and student, but also student to the teacher, and students to students, and that this process should be acknowledged as part of the learning process. This means that decisionmaking, if it is to be informed and based on all of the participants’ understandings, should be distributed and not strictly hierarchical. Although not specifically writing about critical approaches to education, Davis and Sumara describe the role that distributed decision-making plays in complexity theory approaches to education in a way that delocalizes the nexus of power: Pragmatically speaking, with regard to shared/distributed work or understandings, the upshot is that a person should never strive to position herself or himself (or a text or other figurehead) as the final authority on matters of appropriate or correct action. Structures can and should be in place to allow students to participate in these decisions. For us, then, an important element in effective educational and research practices is the capacity to disperse control around matters of intention, interpretation, and appropriateness. (2009, p. 42)

Such an approach was evident in Justice Citizens. Although I had originally expected students to identify topics that I felt were important—for example, I wanted them to look at topics like homelessness or racism—the students responded by identifying topics for their films which they felt were more relevant to the local communities. Students also had a lot of leeway in deciding how best to approach the task of filmmaking. Some chose to attend technical training sessions that we provided, while others preferred an ‘experiment and see’ approach. This is an example of the way that the decision-making power did not rest solely in my hands as the teacher, but was more equally shared between all participants in the class. Furthermore, Justice Citizens was different to other traditions of critical pedagogy in that it was less about

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structured approaches to learning, and instead privileged the idea of being flexible, organic and improvised. This was present in a number of ways in Justice Citizens, most obviously in the way that I and the students needed to adapt the focus of their films, as described above, but also in the ways students recalibrated their ideas and expectations in terms of their films and their audiences.

4.3 Self-Organising Systems Critical pedagogues emphasise the importance of grassroots organising and activism (for example, see Staples 2012). As such, they reject the top-down, authoritarian overtones that are often present within education, where decisions are made in the best interests of students with little input from the students. By adopting this approach critical pedagogues require students to be organised at a grassroots level, but it also requires a level of activism that is often absent in traditional pedagogical approaches. Central to many critical pedagogical traditions is challenging oppression and resisting power, in whatever form that is present. This is present in complexity thinking through the idea of self-organising systems. Complexity thinking recognises that systems (or organisms) respond to external stimuli, and this behaviour will change both the organism and the external stimuli (Davis and Sumara 2009). This has direct links to the idea of challenging the status quo, and the requirement for students to be self-organising. Many traditions of critical pedagogy are described as student-centred (Freire 1970). However, it is my contention that this is fundamentally different to an approach to student learning that is self-organising; that is, one that is student-led. Studentcentred classrooms might have the needs and the interests of the students at heart, but they can still be places where authoritarian approaches to education, dictated by the teacher and the broader regulatory framework, are practised. By contrast, a self-organising approach to education would be organised and practised by the students themselves; in this instance, the role of the teacher would be to provide an environment where such an approach might flourish. Such an approach is different to even ‘bottom-up’ approaches to learners, as there is much less emphasis placed on the teacher or facilitator and his or her role, and instead it seeks to provide the environment in which learners can determine their own path of learning, individually and collaboratively with peers. Such an approach privileges the right of the young person in question to pursue those passions which interest him or her, rather than being directed by a teacher—even if that teacher is a well-meaning activist. This was present in Justice Citizens, too. As students underwent the program, they began to think both more broadly about the topics at hand and their involvement, and also beyond the scope of the program and how they might prolong their involvement with these topics of interest after Justice Citizens had come to an end. I have drawn on the idea of social capital to explain how they were able to leverage the new capital they had developed through the program into ongoing links and connections with organisations that would allow them to continue their work towards equality and

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justice. A good example of this is the student who joined the Nepean Waterkeepers, an environmental group, during the project as she saw it was directly aligned with her interest in environmental justice.

4.4 Emergent Learning Finally, one of the central tenets of critical pedagogy is the process of ‘naming the world’, that is, to become literate in the way that power works in society. This idea is closely linked to conscientisation, where a person becomes aware of the way that society works to oppress either them or others through covert means. This has links with the notion of emergent learning and transdisciplinarity in complexity thinking (Davis and Sumara 2009), which is used to describe the new learnings that take place within a complex system, usually as a result of the interaction between the disparate elements in the system. This new learning affects both the teacher and students, as much as either of those terms have any meaning in complex system, and is characterised by being unpredictable and student-directed. In terms of refreshing critical pedagogy, this suggests that educators need to be mindful not only of the content of the learning, or the pedagogical approaches that they adopt, but also the environment provided for that learning to take place in. Speaking more broadly, it suggests that educators need to build partnerships that extend beyond the boundaries of educational institutions in a real and authentic way, rather than erecting artificial walls between schools and communities. I think that this feature was perhaps the most obvious one displayed during Justice Citizens. The emergent learning took place for both myself and the students—and, I imagine, a number of other people involved in the project. For example, I feel that I became literate in the concerns that young people described as issues in their local communities, and I also became literate in how they felt those concerns might be addressed. The participants, on the other hand, began to explore learning which [arose] out of the interaction between a number of people and resources, in which the learners organise and determine both the process and to some extent the learning destinations, both of which are unpredictable. The interaction is in many senses self-organised, but it nevertheless requires some constraint and structure. It may include virtual or physical networks, or both. (Williams et al. 2011, p. 42)

Emergent learning has much in common with constructivist ideas about learning, but it is broader in meaning because there is the recognition that not only is learning coconstructed by the participants in the learning process, but there is also the potential for entirely new and exciting learning to take place, to which all participants, but especially the teacher, must be alive.

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5 Conclusion In the following chapter, I will draw together the above ideas to describe Justice Pedagogy.

References boyd, d. (2014). It’s complicated: The social lives of networked teens. New Haven: Yale University Press. Butler, M. (2011). Clicktivism, slacktivism, or ‘real’ activism: Cultural codes of American activism in the internet era (Master’s thesis, University of Colorado, Colorado). Retrieved from: http://ind ividual.utoronto.ca/christine/sources/clicktivism.pdf. Byrne, D. (2014). Thoughts on a pedagogy of complexity. Complicity, 11(2), 40. Calkins, L. (1991). Living between the lines. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books. Choules, K. (2007). Social change education: Context matters. Adult Education Quarterly, 57(2), 159–176. Christensen, H. S. (2011). Political activities on the internet: Slacktivism or political participation by other means? First Monday, 16(2). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v16i2.3336. Davis, B., & Sumara, D. (2009). Complexity as a theory of education. TCI (Transnational Curriculum Inquiry), 5(2), 33–44. Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York: Touchstone. Ellsworth, E. (1989). Why doesn’t this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review, 59(3), 297–324. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Habermas, J. (1989). The structural transformation of the public sphere. Cambridge: Polity Press. James, T. (1990). Kurt Hahn and the aims of education. Journal of Experiential Education, 13(1), 6–13. Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. New York: New York University Press. Johnson, L., & Morris, P. (2010). Towards a framework for critical citizenship education. The Curriculum Journal, 21(1), 77–96. Kennelly, J. (2009). Good citizen/bad activist: The cultural role of the state in youth activism. The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 31(2–3), 127–149. Kraft, D., & Sakofs, M. (Eds.). (1988). The theory of experiential education. Boulder, CO: Association for Experiential Education. Lynn, M. (2004). Inserting the ‘race’ into critical pedagogy: An analysis of ‘race-based epistemologies’. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 36(2), 153–165. Putnam, R. D. (2001). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York: Simon and Schuster. Staples, L. (2012). Community organizing for social justice: Grassroots groups for power. Social Work with Groups, 35(3), 287–296. Tufekci, Z. (2017). Twitter and tear gas: The power and fragility of networked protest. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Van Dijck, J. (2013). The culture of connectivity: A critical history of social media. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Walker, S. P., & Anthony, R. (1992). Changing schools through experiential education. ED345929. Retrieved from: https://www.ericdigests.org/1992-3/changing.htm. Williams, R., Karousou, R., & Mackness, J. (2011). Emergent learning and learning ecologies in Web 2.0. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 12(3), 39–59. Zuckerman, E. (2014). New media, new civics? Policy and Internet, 6(2), 151–168.

Chapter 13

Justice Pedagogy: A Framework for Active Citizen Education

Abstract This chapter will describe the Justice Pedagogy framework, based on the conceptual parallels outlined above. For each of the six features of Justice Pedagogy, this chapter will link back to Justice Citizens as an exemplar, but also comment on what that means for civics and citizenship educators. This will be presented in a framework that will be described and discussed. It will focus on these three key themes • Emergent Learning: school–community partnerships, experiential learning • Self-organising systems: action-oriented learning, student-led learning • Distributed decision-making: critical literacy, advocacy for systemic change. The chapter will finish with a discussion about the efficacy of using the Justice Pedagogy framework in schools.

1 The Failure of Civics and Citizenship Education It might seem strange to talk about the failure of civics and citizenship education in Australia, at least, which is perhaps one of the most stable democracies in the Western world. However, I think the apparent success of the Australian electoral system does not inure it from future dangers of authoritarianism and apathy—and there is some evidence that those dangers are increasing, if one looks beyond Australia’s borders—or even within them. However, according to the official reports, the current model of civics and citizenship education in Australian schools is failing to meet the stated aim of developing active and informed citizens. Young people are not meeting the expected standards in their knowledges about civics matters; there is concern about widespread apathy and disinterest in the mechanisms and institutions that govern Australia. More broadly, it appears young people are becoming less likely to join clubs, or trade unions or any of the other functioning contributors to civil society. And this decline in participation is evident in other countries around the world.

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It is not fair to lay the blame for this failure with civics and citizenship educators. In fact, there are some excellent practitioners out there who develop interesting and challenging learning opportunities for their students; however, this takes place in spite of the curriculum, rather than because of it. Even the new version of the Australian Curriculum, political football that it has been notwithstanding, does little to embrace the complexity of what it means to be either a young person or a citizen in Australia in the twenty-first century. There is far too much emphasis placed on content knowledge and remembering the names and functions of various institutions. There is too much emphasis on history and nation-building and mythologising, and too little focus placed on the issues that matter to you people, presented alongside ways that young people might be able to engage with them, and thus demonstrate active citizenship, rather than learn about it. Clearly, there is a need for a fundamental shift in civics and citizenship education, in Australia and in many other countries too. My argument is that this shift should embrace the opportunities afforded by the complex global environment, and focus on assisting young people in adapting to and using these opportunities in thoughtful, critical and active ways.

2 The Rise of New Forms of Social Movement Organising, Led by Young People There is little doubt that social media and mobile technology have altered society in fundamental ways. There will be—and should be—much discussion about the value of these alterations, and possible side effects from our growing addiction to these tools. However, these discussions do not mean that, as educators, we should fail to embrace the opportunities present in social media and mobile technology to engage students and citizens in meaningful learning opportunities that are directly relevant to their own interests and desires. Indeed, the risk, such as it is, is not so much that we as educators will fail to embrace these tools, but rather, as we are beginning to see, young people will make use of the tools for their own ends, and further render civics and citizenship education meaningless. As discussed in Sect. 1, we are already seeing people of all ages, but especially young people, engage with other members of the public across a wide variety of platforms and in diverse environments. Much of these conversations might begin and grow in the digital space, but they certainly do not end there—as shown by the power of March 4 Our Lives and the School Strike 4 Climate. Alongside these movements, there is a growing desire amongst young people for a politics that foregrounds their interests, that is responsive to their desires, and provides them with both a sense of identity and a level of interactivity that is only possible when facilitated through mobile technology and social media. This approach is one that has developed from young people’s engagement with an increasingly global and complex environment; old nations of nation states and national citizenship lose relevance when faced with

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global problems like refugees and climate change. Our ageing political systems often appear—or perhaps are—to be powerless to address the concerns of young people, so instead they turn to social media to communicate, to identify and to organise and take action. In order to remain relevant, it is necessary for civics and citizenship educators to begin to engage with the lived experiences of young citizens. These experiences are incredibly diverse, and are very distant from notions of bicameral forms of government and the nuances of preferential voting. While I don’t dispute the value of teaching about these things, I do argue that such knowledge needs to be contextual; that is, it needs to be ‘just in time’, rather than ‘just in case’.

3 The Recognition of Complexity and the Need for Complex Pedagogical Approaches There are a number of features of complexity that are present in this globalised world, and I have made the argument that these features are present in contemporaneous forms of active citizenship. To begin with, the movements that I have described above are, for the most part, characterised by their non-linearity and their embrace of distributed decision-making. In some movements, there is a desperate avoidance to have a single spokesperson or figurehead. Even in movements where there is a leader, such as Greta Thunberg, individual chapters are keen to express their individuality, by creating their own social media accounts, organising their own events and taking action locally. This approach brings with it its own problems, and can make communication challenging, but it also has significant advantages in that it enables a greater level of participation from all, rather than a select few. A second feature is the notion of emergent learning. In a number of the examples listed above, the social movements have managed to achieve breakthroughs and changes to government policy and public understanding that were previously considered unobtainable. One of the most obvious examples is the success that March 4 Our Lives had in changing Florida’s gun laws; this exhibits the kind of learning that develops through action, and often was entirely unforeseeable (at least by some) at the start of the process. There is also the learning that takes place by those involved in the process as they develop new ways of using the affordances provided by social media to communicate with each other; there are examples of this during the Arab Spring; some of the ways that activists used technology to communicate ideas and share their accounts of what was happening demonstrate the power of this kind of learning. Another key feature that is present in these examples is the way that these organisations seem to organise themselves. Unlike previously structured and hierarchical organisations, such as trade unions, which might have chapters, branches and councils, each with elected officials, one of the key aspects of the new forms of social movements is that participation is open to everyone, and the organisational cost is

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almost entirely eliminated. It’s easy to set up an event on Social Media and invite all your followers along to it or to host a watch party; the mechanics of viral spread can become involved, and posts, tweets and so on rapidly grow beyond the ability of the original poster to organise—but that does not matter, as the function of so much interest and engagement, and the use of technological affordances like likes and shares and retweets imposes its own kind of self-organised order. These features were present in the development of Justice Citizens, and have informed my theorising about active citizenship education. With that in mind, I have developed Justice Pedagogy which combines the feature of complexity pedagogy with some of the key themes from Justice Citizens into a framework for active citizenship education.

4 Justice Pedagogy: A Framework for Active Citizenship Education Using the ideas of self-organising systems, distributed decision-making and emergent learning within critical pedagogy, one can begin to consider how such an approach might itself reinvigorate debate about civics and citizenship education. It is into this space that I insert Justice Pedagogy, a conception of the way that we might effectively encourage the development of active, justice-oriented young people in Australian schools. Earlier in this book, I suggested that the success of Justice Citizens was because of six features: school–community partnerships, experiential learning, action-oriented learning, student-led learning, critical literacy and advocacy for systematic change. However, it is my contention, and central to my vision of a justice pedagogy, that in addition to these features, educators must be mindful of the ways that such features might interact with each other, and how these resulting interactions affect the concept as a whole. With this in mind, I think that it is possible to begin to draw out some interesting notions combining this refreshed version of critical pedagogy and civics and citizenship education. This is depicted in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1 Justice pedagogy

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Emergent learning occurs when transdisciplinary groups are formed and interact with each other. In terms of justice pedagogy, this can be developed through the features of school–community partnerships and experiential learning. In both of these features, there is an emphasis on engaging with people or knowledges beyond the walls of the school. It is through this process that young people will have the opportunity to develop skills and understandings that are new and relevant to becoming active citizens. Action-oriented learning and student-led learning are both related to the notion of self-organising systems, in terms of structure and purpose. A selforganising system has the capability to determine its own purpose: this is expressed in Justice Citizens through the notion of action-oriented learning, where students were encouraged to engage in taking action about issues of injustice in a practical way. A system also has the capacity to structure itself in the way it sees fit; in Justice Citizens, students could do this by determining the way in which they participated in the class, as well as what particular issues they chose to research. Finally, there is the notion of distributed decision-making. This finds an expression in Justice Citizens through the features of critical literacy and advocacy for systemic change. I’ve taken a wide view of the notion of distributed decision-making, beyond the bounds of the participants of Justice Citizens, and including the way that public opinion is shaped in the (digital) public sphere. To engage with this process of decision-making, young people need to develop the critical literacy skills to critique what they are reading and discussing in that space, and they also need to skills to successfully engage in that space in such a way as to build support for their intent to challenge injustice. Justice Pedagogy offers an exciting insight into fresh approaches to civics and citizenship education. It does this by leaving behind much of the baggage of previous approaches, which emphasised content-based curricula and didactic pedagogy, and instead uses a new vision of critical pedagogy to suggest innovative approaches to civics and citizenship education. By borrowing conceptual constructs from complexity theory, it is possible to imagine new structures and contexts that will encourage the flourishing of a more equitable and empowering pedagogical space.

Appendix One: Methodological Considerations

Methodological Considerations This section discusses the methodology behind the development of Justice Citizens.

Research Design As stated above, I was interested in the current context and civics and citizenship education; in order to explore this I designed my research based on a framework drawn from critical ethnography and interwoven with research portraiture. These sources of data included stakeholder interviews (before and during Justice Citizens), teacher observations and field notes (during Justice Citizens); and interviews with students (before and after the project). These sources are represented diagrammatically in Fig. 1. Below, I explain each of the sources in more detail. I conducted 13 pre-project interviews with a range of stakeholders drawn from different backgrounds. As can be seen in Fig. 2, I interviewed teachers from both primary and secondary backgrounds, and also tertiary educators. I was conscious, too, that I needed to interview people outside the formal educational sphere, so I also spoke to parents. I was also able to interview community activists and environmental campaigners, a local council cultural development officer, and teachers from rural NSW. Most of the interviewees were from the school’s local area, which was appropriate to the local nature of my research, but I also engaged a more global audience by interviewing two experts in digital citizenship from the US. I interviewed these stakeholders to gain an understanding of the ways that civics and citizenship education is approached in different fields and educational roles; that is, I was trying to gain an understanding of current practices of civics and citizenship education, and how formal or informal they are. I had previously identified that civics and citizenship education is not just the domain of governmental institutions © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Heggart, Activist Citizenship Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4694-9

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Fig. 1 Summary of research design Fig. 2 Pre-project Stakeholder interviews

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Fig. 3 Participant observation

but is also used by non-government organisations like charities. The interviews with these stakeholders were semi-structured. The interview questions were both openended and informal, and I felt that the interviews were more like discussions and conversations than formal interviews. I also decided to tailor the questions to suit the individual being interviewed; there would be little point talking to a youth worker about the formal civics and citizenship curriculum, but it would be advantageous to have that conversation with a teacher. In this way, I sought to develop a more holistic understanding of what various approaches to civics and citizenship education might look like, and the principles upon which they were formulated. The second method used to gather data was participant observation (Fig. 3). During the course of the project, students were challenged to identify a local issue they felt was important, research that issue, and then present their findings about the issue in the form of a short film. Some of these films were shown at a film festival to members of the community. Throughout the project, I acted as teacher-observer, looking for evidence of what might be described as justice-oriented behaviour. In particular, I was trying to identify important or ‘telling moments’ (Ely 2006, p. 52) that either demonstrated a concept or was evidence of a shift in young peoples’ understandings about their own identities and the ways they enacted citizenship in their lives and communities; that is, a point in time where, according to the theoretical model I had adopted, they moved further along the continuum to becoming justice-oriented citizens. These moments included my observations of when students themselves expressed a change in their own thinking, for example, when they described their new understanding of the media. I was also seeking answers

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Fig. 4 Student interviews

to the question: What kinds of educational experiences had taken place in order for young peoples’ understandings of themselves to change so that they could recognise themselves as justice-oriented citizens? I conducted interviews with student participants before and after the project (Fig. 4). I sought out a wide range of students to participate in the interviews— there was a mix of boys and girls, of higher and lower achievers, and a range of different ethnicities. The data gathered from these interviews allowed me to verify my own interpretations by a kind of triangulation, as well as exploring further details and interpretations. In order to explicate the work and draw together the disparate strands of the research, I crafted a series of research portraits by building on the work of LawrenceLightfoot (1983) and Lawrence-Lightfoot and Hoffman Davis (1997) in order to more fully demonstrate these important moments in the development of young people. These research portraits were built from my own analyses of the transcribed interviews and field notes, and presented a stitching together of all the data sources into a unitary whole. These research portraits are presented as vignettes between the chapters of this book. Research portraits offer a rich description of particular events or settings by exploring the complexities of the context and the way meaning is produced within those complexities. Essentially, the researcher, drawing on his or her analysis of the data, seeks to craft short narratives about particular moments during the research,

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and by doing so, achieve understanding about why participants acted in the fashion they did. Unlike Lawrence-Lightfoot, however, I do not feel that research portraiture exists separately from ethnography; rather it contributes conceptual understanding to the ethnographic explication of data.

Research Methods The reason I chose participant observation as a method of gathering data was that it allowed for a more nuanced understanding of human behaviour, as compared to other data collection tools such as surveys. According to Hammersley and Atkinson (1983), participant observation is a ‘uniquely human, interpretive approach’ (p. 249). When coupled with interviews (my use of which is discussed later), observation allows researchers to understand the subjects of their research at a much deeper level. Lichtman (2010) writes: ‘Observing humans in natural settings assists our understandings of the complexity of human behaviour and interrelationships among groups’ (p. 165). One of the most commonly cited qualitative researchers, Clifford Geertz, argued that observations provided the opportunity for thick description (Geertz 1973). In support of this argument, Cohen et al. (2007) write: The use of immediate awareness, or direct cognition, as a principal mode of research thus has the potential to yield more valid or authentic data than would otherwise be the case with mediated or inferential methods. (p. 396)

Cohen, Manion and Morrison identify two other advantages. First, by observing, the researcher gets to see what people do, rather than what they say they do. This means that there is an added level of truth in observations that might be obscured in data gathered through other means. Second, observations are also less intrusive and time-consuming than interviews. The interviews I used to supplement my observations were artificial constructs—they were different experiences from those most students have every day. However, the classroom experience is a very natural one for students, and so students would be more likely to act in a natural way, the observation of which would provide important data for my research. Delamont (2007) makes this point very strongly: Proper ethnography is participant observation done during fieldwork … spending long periods watching people, coupled with talking to them about what they are doing, thinking and saying, designed to see how they understand their world. (p. 206)

In this section, I will discuss in detail the elements of observation that are most pertinent to my own research. During the course of this study, I observed the participants of the Justice Citizens course in a number of settings. Most importantly, I was able to observe the students as they worked through the course during our normal lesson time. This meant that I could take note of their reactions to the material and process in the class, and also their interactions with myself and each other in ensuing

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discussions. For example, I was able to see how students reacted to material on asylum seekers—in a natural way, as I was in the classroom with them. I could also listen in on the conversations they had with each other without appearing obtrusive. In addition, I could observe the way they interacted and spoke to community members. By observing the students in this way, I felt that I was more capable of understanding their thoughts and actions in terms of active citizenship than I would have been had I used other data collection methods. However, I was also able to observe the students during other events in the school, and in the wider community. Delamont (2007) says the aim of the ethnographer is to ‘understand how the cultures they are studying ‘work’, that is, to grasp what the world looks like to the people who live in the fishing village, the boarding school or the mining community’ (p. 206). There is an important point to be made here. Although this definition might lean more towards an anthropological definition of ethnography and participant observation (terms which Delamont suggests are often used interchangeably), my research in some ways differs from a standard classroom ethnography in terms of its setting. The setting for the participant observation was a curious mix of both the realistic and the artificial. Although the students were engaged in a natural and familiar setting in terms of physical location, that is, a classroom lesson with a mixed ability group of Year 9 students, the setting was also artificial to the extent that the lesson content and process was non-standard. Rather than a typical Mathematics or English lesson, students were aware of taking part in a new subject called Justice Citizens. This setting allowed me to explore the ideas and beliefs of these young people regarding civics and citizenship (and I discuss what evidence I was looking for later in this section). In order to gather the evidence that I felt was important, I needed to be free from the normal curricular and time constraints that might have otherwise limited my exploration of these issues; hence, a custom-designed and admittedly, partially artificial, program of study was necessary. During participant observation, researchers must also decide on what is to be observed. Observers cannot possibly document everything they see, even in narrowly defined spaces, and nor should they try to do so—much of what is seen might not be relevant to the observers’ interests. Although the advent of cheap video technology has allowed researchers to record activities for observation, the use of such technology brings its own challenges. For example, some subjects might feel that being filmed, even with their consent, is more obtrusive than having a researcher present, and thus their behaviours might change significantly. Before the Justice Citizens research began I had already started considering what I would be looking for in the participant observation phase. Delamont (2007) argues that a well-conceived ethnographic study always begins with foreshadowed problems that guide the researcher in determining what is important and what is not. Identification of these problems arises from the researcher’s own interest and from engagement with experts, advisors and the literature of the field. In an ethnographic study, it is often not simply a matter of observing one set of behaviours or one interaction; the nature of ethnography encourages deep immersion in the subject. As Delamont (2007) argues, it is a matter of observing and recording

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as much as possible. Anything not recorded is gone forever. The challenge—and the work—for the ethnographer begins with the decision about what is important enough to include in the analysis, and what must be abandoned. Of course, such decisions are the researcher’s, but Erickson (1985) calls for educators to apply some rules as a mechanism for sorting their evidence. He acknowledges the impossibility of objectivity, but instead calls for a ‘disciplined subjectivity’ and a willingness to provide data that both contributes to and conflicts with the presented material in order to fully demonstrate the transparency of the research. In the case of Justice Citizens, my evidence gathering was primarily directed by my analysis of two features of the course. First, I wanted to examine the interactions between the students, and between the students and myself. Second, I wanted to examine the behaviours of the students both in the classroom and beyond it, during and after the Justice Citizens course. This placed me in the position of teacherresearcher which introduces a number of challenges, including shifts in focus from the experiential to the theoretical, and from the personal to the intellectual (Labaree 2003). Fortunately, as I had already developed the curriculum for Justice Citizens, I was able to avoid some of the ethical challenges faced by teacher-researchers. As there was no formal assessment required in this course, I could afford to explore issues raised by students in more depth than teachers who were conscious of the impending deadline of summative assessment. I examined how the students spoke to each other and to me, and later in the program, to other teachers. I looked for examples of when they were able to express a point of view, and how well reasoned it was; how they engaged in their own information gathering about particular issues; and whether they felt that the government and other agencies should deal with those issues. I also wanted to hear the student’s stories about their communities: what was happening in their homes and neighbourhoods; how they felt about those things; and what they felt could be done—by themselves and others—to enact positive social change. I also hoped to hear students discuss how they or someone they knew had been involved in what might loosely be termed ‘active citizenship’ in their local communities, and what the effect of that activism had been. Regarding the interactions of the students, much of the Justice Citizens course was based on discussions between the students involved. These discussions would often begin with a stimulus—like a short film, a presentation by a member of the community, or an activity such as the Venn Diagram of Possibility and Interest sought to do two things during the discussions. First, I facilitated them by encouraging as many students as possible to contribute, rather than only hearing from the loudest voices in the room. Second, I shared my opinions about the different matters we discussed in class—but always prefacing with a statement about these being my opinions, not what the students were required to think. This was a novel concept for the students and for me! Another decision that a researcher needs to make is about both the frequency and duration of an observation. The time allocated for the Justice Citizens program was six months. During this period, I kept detailed field notes, writing two or three pages after every interaction or session with the students. This tool assisted in the reflecting

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part of the process (Delamont 2007). Although six months was quite a long time, I was concerned at first that I would not have enough exposure to the students as I was only seeing them for an hour each week. However, my concerns were allayed because I spent a lot more time with the students than I had expected; in addition to scheduled class times, we spent time before and after school, during lunchtime and recess working on the films. This meant that I was in regular and frequent contact with the students in varying degrees of formality, all of which, I believe, added to the trustworthiness of the research. In some ways, my gathering of data was also constrained by the structure of the Justice Citizens course. I was the teacher for the course, so I focused my observations on the students, particularly the ways they responded, as a group and individually, to the questions and activities that were part of the course. This had advantages, too; when needed, I was able to adapt the lesson to include new and interesting lines of inquiry. Linked to these decisions about what to observe is the requirement to gain access. Schools and other educational institutions often have stringent rules about researchers’ access to students, and what can be discussed with them. Other, less formal, rules might dictate access to teachers or other staff, who might feel uncomfortable speaking with a researcher in their place of work. Fortunately, gaining access for my observations of Justice Citizens was straightforward as I was already an employee of the school. I did also gain Ethics clearance from the school’s regional Catholic Education Office. The Human Research Ethics Committee of the University of Technology Sydney also approved my research. The process of participant observations required careful planning because I would be acting in a number of different roles within this research project. Not only would I devise the course and source the content for Justice Citizens, I would be responsible for managing a team of teachers to deliver the course to students. As well, being a teacher within the class, I would be interacting with students as a participant who assisted them as they progressed through the material. This meant I would have the opportunity to sit in on many of the extra-curricular experiences that were part of Justice Citizens. I would also have a perspective that was intimately involved with the program. An example of this was when I accompanied students when they went to speak to a local refugee group. The nature of my observations varied, too. For example, although I tried to limit the didactic aspects of the Justice Citizens course, I did at times need to act in such a fashion, if only to maintain a sense of structure to the lessons. These times when I was giving instructions were the hardest to observe. Ideally, I would have liked to watch the students’ reactions to my instructions. However, as a facilitator asking questions or sharing ideas, I was able to carefully observe students and consider their replies. At other times, and this became more common as the program developed, I was able to observe the students as they went about their research or film-making. In these instances, I was superfluous to their requirements, which afforded me time to carefully watch as they discussed their films or made decisions about what to include or exclude.

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The final issue for an ethnographic researcher to consider is what his or her role might be (Wong 1995). This becomes particularly important when the researcher must decide to be either a participant observer or simply an uninvolved observer. Participant observers take part in the actions of the research subjects as much as possible; they seek to learn about the lived experiences that they are studying by undertaking those experiences in the same ways as the participants. Of course, such an experience is impossible to fully reproduce, and participant observations are therefore often artificial to some degree. The traditional role of an observer is to be non-interventionist (Wong 1995), but this was not appropriate in the context of Justice Citizens because I was a teacher in the class. Although I did not act as a participant observer in the sense that I was a student in the class, I was nevertheless a participant in the class as a teacher. The student-centred nature of my research project did blur some of the lines between my role as a teacher and the role of the students. In some ways, I felt that I was acting more as a facilitator of learning experiences than as a teacher. Along with the experiences that I organised for the students, the newness of this style allowed me to participate in the project as well. Although I was acting as a teacher, I think that the negative authoritative overtones that are often associated with the role of the teacher were largely absent. The students were aware of my role as the teacher, of course, but I worked to create a student-centred learning environment where the emphasis was on student choice and engagement rather than the enforcing of arbitrary school rules. For example, there was no-homework policy in the Justice Citizens classes, and no requirement to bring books or to complete set pieces of work. Having said that, I am not suggesting that my authority as a teacher was not present; rather, it was a positive use of authority, rather than a negative one. Kitwood (1977) identified three common conceptions of the interview. There is the interview as straight data transfer, in which the interviewee passes on information of a factual nature to the interviewer, who records that information. Another conception is of the interview as a biased transaction, where elements of the interviewee’s and the interviewer’s opinions will shade the meaning being constructed. Finally, Kitwood describes interviews as an encounter, sharing features of everyday life, almost like a purposeful conversation. Such an approach is shared by Siedman (2013), who suggests researchers consider interviews as relationship. Interviews were used widely within Justice Citizens study. Students were interviewed before and after the program, and other stakeholders—teachers, community workers, parents—were interviewed about their thoughts on civics and citizenship education. I saw my role as a researcher to engage in the co-creation of knowledge with participants. This means that the interviews with students and other stakeholders were located between Kitwood’s second and third conceptions, but were dependent upon the development of a relationship with participants, as suggested by Siedman. The conversation that took place was purposeful—I was looking to hear specific stories and opinions—but my interpretation of the meanings of these interviews was shaded by my own experiences as a teacher, student and researcher.

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The interviews I conducted were semi-structured. I approached them with a list of possible ideas and topics that I wanted to discuss with the participants, but I was also open to following leads and ideas that arose from our discussion. Cannell and Kahn (1968) describe an interview as a two-person conversation initiated by the interviewer for the specific purpose of obtaining research-relevant information, and focused by him [sic] on content specified by research objectives of systematic description, prediction or explanation. (p. 271)

This is a limited definition of interviewing. It doesn’t give enough weight to the idea of interaction between the interviewer and the interviewee or what Holstein and Gubrium (2016) have described as ‘active interviewing’ (p. 67). The interviews that I conducted were successful for the most part because of the existing relationships I had with the participants, which allowed for a more open and frank conversations. The recognition of this relationship made my interviewing technique a mix of the ‘standardised open-ended’ and ‘informal conversational’ types of interviews suggested by Patton (2002). I interviewed two groups of people for this research project. The first group were young people who were involved in the Justice Citizens film project. The second group were key informants and stakeholders, including teachers, parents and community workers. Through the interviews I also sought to engage with and explore the lifeworlds of the participants. In order to do this, as suggested by Kvale (1996), I tried to identify specific incidents, rather than more general ideas. These specific incidents were linked to the students’ experiences in and out of the classroom and would encapsulate or provide ‘telling moments’ (Ely 2006, p. 58). I was also conscious of the need to accept contradiction and ambiguity between participants—where they might be describing the same event, but would attribute different meanings to it. Finally, I was conscious that, even though I worked with students every day, engaging with them as a researcher was very different to engaging with them as a teacher, and I needed to be mindful of that during the interview process (Groundwater-Smith et al. 2014). In the Justice Citizens research project, 11 students were interviewed twice each. These participants were selected from different class groups involved in the project, and they and their parents had to give consent. I sought a broadly representative sample of the Year 9 cohort. Six boys and five girls were involved. Two of the participants identified as Indigenous Australians, one as Fijian, and one as Philippino. The rest identified as White Australians. The students were aged between 14 and 16 over the time between the first interview, the research project and the final interview. The first round of interviews took place before the first lesson of the Justice Citizens course and was intended to gather information about students’ understanding of civics and citizenship in their lives and at school, as well as find examples of what they thought was active citizenship. Although these were my intended topics, the interviews actually covered a wide range of issues, including school, politics, environmentalism, faith and religion. Each of the interviews was conducted in a separate room with only the interviewer and the participant present, with the exception of one interview, where two participants asked if they could be interviewed at the same

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time. The students were all hesitant at the start of the interview process; it was a new experience for them, and they were concerned about having their voices recorded. However, I was able to allay their concerns, and as the interviews progressed, the students felt more comfortable talking to me. The students were more confident talking about practical issues, like their schooling or their involvement in sporting groups, but less confident talking about more abstract issues like what it means to be an active citizen. I had a range of themes that I wanted to raise, but I did not limit the interview to these; I often followed conversation markers when I felt they might be fruitful. This led to some variation in the length and content of the interviews. The interviews lasted between 20 and 40 min, with most of them about 25 min. After the conclusion of the Justice Citizens course, I interviewed the same students again. These interviews were generally shorter than the previous interviews (lasting between 15 and 25 min), and were more evaluative in nature in that they discussed what how successful Justice Citizens had been, and how their engagement with it had developed their ideas about active citizenship. Students were noticeably more ready to discuss their ideas about active citizenship at the second interview than they had been in the first. This is reflective of their increased confidence and developing knowledge about active citizenship. These second interviews were intended to explore how students’ conceptions of civics and citizenship had changed over the course of the project, as well as to ask them to ‘reflect back’ and ‘reflect forward’. I took this idea from the work of Hughes and Bruce (2013), who documented the value of this approach for students. When reflecting back, the students were asked to consider which parts of the project they felt were the best—where had they learnt the most, what had they enjoyed, what had they thought was pointless or of little value. This was, in part, an evaluation of the project, but I was also looking for information about how they felt that they had grown from the experiences within the project, in particular, specific instances where they felt that they had either seen or been an active citizen. When asking students to ‘reflect forward’, I was challenging them to consider whether they were going to act as active citizens in the future, and if they were, what that might look like. I was looking for specific incidents or examples of how they might build upon the links they established as part of the project in order to continue to keep being an active citizen. At this point, it is worth reflecting upon my own relationship with the students. I have previously discussed my role as both an insider and an outsider, and I think this has particular relevance to the interviews. As a teacher in the school, I was a figure of some authority to the students, capable of exerting power over them should I choose to do so. However, I was also a well-liked teacher and someone that students thought that they could talk to about things that they felt were important. This had occurred numerous times in the past. I also had a broader relationship with the students because of activities outside school. For example, I knew a number of them from parish activities and fundraisers and participation in the Rural Fire Service Cadet Program.

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This broader relationship was critical to the success of the interviews. I was seeking honest responses to my questions; in many ways, this is the antithesis of what normally occurs in schools where students are trained to provide the answers that the teacher wants, and not necessarily the answers that they might think are correct. By knowing the students both as learners and individuals, I was able to establish a rapport that allowed them to speak openly and honestly with me. The second group of interviews were different in terms of purpose, participants and content. I interviewed a range of educators and community workers, parents and ex-students about their experiences with civics and citizenship education in particular, and more broadly about topics like activism, digital citizenship and working with youth or in the community development sector. In total, I interviewed 13 individuals. These interviews were longer than the students’ interviews, generally lasting for between 40 and 60 min, although one memorable interview with a very experienced teacher lasted for more than 90 min. To each of these interviews, I came with a list of topics I wanted to discuss, but, like the student interviews, the conversations often ranged well beyond these topics. The central difference between these interviews and the student interviews related to my relationship with the interviewees. Unlike the student interviews, where I was in a position of authority, the power relationship between myself and these individuals in the second group was not as clear. In some cases I was an authority figure to the interviewee. For example, with teachers from the school, because I was a senior leader there they might have felt that my relationship with them necessitated certain responses. I addressed this by explaining that this interview was not related in any way to their work. Furthermore, the teachers all volunteered to be interviewed; they had their own thoughts on the topics we were going to discuss and wanted to share them, and they saw this research project as an opportunity to do so. In other cases, I was working with professional colleagues—teachers from other schools and sectors that I had met in the course of my work. These included two teachers from the US whom I knew through the Apple Distinguished Educator program. The conversations we engaged in were different from those with the Australian teachers, mostly because they were coming from different perspectives in terms of education. Seven of the interview participants (especially in the group that were not teachers) were women, and during these interviews I was conscious that my gender might play a role in the interview. Similarly, when I spoke with interviewees of various ethnicities, I was aware that as an Anglo-Celtic male I might be seen as an embodiment of privilege and dominance, and thus influence the respondents’ answers. I do not think that such traits can be completely negated during an interview, but I did attempt to limit these influences by letting the participants speak as much as possible while I spoke as little as I could. I was very conscious of the way I framed questions, and did not interrupt or interject even when I was excited or interested about something that the interviewee was saying. As discussed earlier, the relationship between an interviewer and an interviewee is central to the success of the interview and it is important to establish a rapport. I was fortunate in two ways in this respect. First, for the stakeholder interviews, I knew

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most of the participants, having already worked with them in some capacity. This pre-existing relationship meant that it was much easier to establish rapport. Second, and this applied to all the participants, I was talking about something that the participants were excited and enthusiastic about—young people and their participation in programs. This was especially true for the community activists and cultural development officers. The student participants demonstrated a similar level of enthusiasm when it came to talking about their school—and all the things they felt were wrong with it—and their participation in the local community. One of the other issues that I faced was in terms of the transcription of these interviews and the reliability of these transcriptions. The act of transcribing the data from a recording is a crucial step in the interview process (Lichtman 2010), and has the potential for massive data loss even when professionally transcribed. When a sound file is transcribed, for example, the interviewer is already making an assumption that actions and body language are less important than what is actually said. It is incredibly difficult to capture every single action or gesture, every pause and hesitation. Therefore, it is important to recognise that the act of interviewing is already an act of interpretation. Interview transcripts are not simply collected by the interviewer; they are, in reality, co-authored by the interviewee and the interviewer. If the transcription of an interview is beginning of the interpretive process, then the analysis of those transcriptions continues it. According to Anderson (1989), such analyses are ‘reflexive, reactive interactions between the recorder and the decontextualised data that are already interpretations of a social encounter’ (p. 368). There is a tension between the desire to look at the data holistically and the requirement to break data down into specific codes and themes, in order to make some kind of sense of them. Anderson describes this process as atomisation of the data. I discuss my analysis, coding and categorisation of the data in the next section.

Data Analysis The methods described above allowed me to gather a wide range of data. The real work of any ethnography, lies in the interpretation of the data, and just like the tensions relating to the correct way to conduct an ethnography, there are similar tensions about how an ethnographer should interpret the data. As already described, I have positioned myself within the field of critical ethnography. I was interested in ways that an alternative program of Civics and Citizenship education might encourage empowerment amongst youth. This was expressed in the way that I was examining how the Justice Citizens course might aid the development of justice-oriented citizens. This focus provided a means for me to interpret the text of the interviews and my observational field notes. Delamont (2007) describes the need to foreshadow any possible issues that one might come across; it is important to recognise that such foreshadowing of these issues is a starting point that is informed by one’s own understandings and current theoretical models, but not a finishing point. I had taken into account ideas like Zyngier’s elegant subversion (2007), Wierenga et al’s global

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citizenship (Wierenga et al. 2008), and Westheimer and Kahne’s justice-oriented citizenship (2004), but I fully expected that my ideas about what constituted useful data, and the way I interpreted them, would change over the course of my analysis. Agar (2006) makes the point: Ethnographers develop codes interactively with the material itself before they address any theory. In fact, their codes change with time. Stable codes from outside, like from a prior theory, with none from inside, are a sure sign of an unacceptable ethnography. (para. 30)

As a critical pedagogue, I was particularly interested in exploring the ways in which the schooling system, as experienced by students in GWS, limited the opportunities the students had for empowering themselves. However, I was also inspired by Lawrence-Lightfoot’s (1983) theories about research portraiture. She writes about looking for a holistic or ‘good’ interpretation of schools, rather than starting from a negative or deficit model. In Justice Citizens I was seeking to identify those aspects of the formal and informal education system that not only limited student choice, but also allowed students to act in ways that could be described as empowered. In short, I wanted to theorise how young people ‘did’ active citizenship, without trying to measure it against traditional models of civics and citizenship. In order to interpret my data, I again drew from both critical ethnography and research portraiture (and, indeed, the broader aspects of phenomenology that Lawrence-Lightfoot cites as being central to her work). Based on my previous experience and literature analysis, I developed a list of categories or open topics that I felt should appear in the research: • • • • • • • • • • •

Citizenship Citizenship Education Community Involvement Justice Citizens Active Citizenship Penrith Politics and Political Process Schools Social Class Social Justice Young People.

I added new topics or subtopics during the fieldwork as I began to understand more about the experiences of young people and other stakeholders. For example, in the list above, Social Justice was not one that I had originally identified. However, I noticed that it was regularly referred to in the stakeholder interviews, so I added it to the list. In this way, my data analysis and interpretation became an iterative process in that I revisited the data and refined, deleted or added to the codes as appropriate. I wanted to be sure that my interpretation was credible and defensible. In addition, I also narrowed the focus of what these broad codes meant, which allowed the open categories to have a number of different levels within each of the broader categories.

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Figure 5 is an example of citizenship education having four sublevels, some of which have a lower level of coding. This exemplifies the way that I narrowed the focus of my interpretative gaze and refined my understanding of the participants’ experiences. As described earlier, I had a number of partly preconceived ideas and notions about topics like active citizenship and participation before I began the interviewing process. This meant that my research was not particularly ‘grounded’—I had already developed a kind of interpretative lens through which I was gathering and examining data. This lens had been formed through my own investigations, my experiences as a teacher, and my understanding of the literature around active citizenship. However, I say these were ‘partly’ preconceived because I was still ready to be surprised by the data—which was often the case as the interviews progressed. For example, when exploring the ways students conceived of the agency of young people, I was surprised at how willing they were to accept that young people in general could be agents of change in society, but individually, they were not capable of this. This illustrates a Fig. 5 An example of coding levels

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more nuanced representation of agency and identity than any that I had previously understood, and hearing students talk about this ‘learned helplessness’, as I came to describe it, was an important part of the Justice Citizens study. However, crucially, I had had no preconceived notion of it and as my data gathering and interpretation progressed, I had to append it to my theory of active citizenship. In the first round of student interviews, I was looking for examples of previous citizenship education, as well as students’ descriptions of what it meant to be an active citizen, and what kind of person was an active citizen. In the second round of interviews, I was more interested in the particular experiences that had occurred during the Justice Citizens course. The focus for my questions during these interviews was on specific concrete experiences that students felt had made them consider their roles as active citizens, as well as how their own feelings of identity and agency had changed since the start of the project. When I was interviewing other stakeholders, my questions were more related to their own experiences of citizenship education (if they were teachers), or the ways in which they felt youth engaged in active citizenship (if they were community workers). Within the observations, I was looking for telling examples of interactions, either student–student, student–teacher or student–guest, during a lesson or other activity where I felt that there was something important taking place related to the development of active citizenship. I use the term ‘interaction’ in its broadest sense to include almost everything that took place within the classroom—and beyond when learning opportunities took us outside the formal domain of the school. Interactions included discussions between the students; I was also very curious about the kind of ‘talk’ they engaged in. The ways they talked about issues in Western Sydney (where Justice Citizens was located) revealed a great deal about their ideas of active citizenship. In one memorable example, a student spoke at length about domestic violence and how it was a growing issue—but the only solution she could conceptualise was for ‘the government to do something about it’. Students also spoke about national or global issues like climate change and refugees, and more personal issues like school uniforms or bullying. These topics revealed that students saw active citizenship as something intensely personal and directly related to their own actions, and that appreciation of it also varied widely between individuals. To draw these themes together and foreground my findings regarding the development of justice-oriented citizens, I developed research portraits. These are presented throughout the text. These research portraits provide an overview of both the Justice Citizens Project and the state of civics and citizenship education in Australia at this time in a way that combines observation and interpretation.

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